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August 15, 1922 



Supplementary to the Brick News 



A TRIP TO CALIFORNIA 

And Several Addresses to the 

Negro Farmers' Congress of 

North CaroHna 

BRICK SCHOOL. IN RETROSPECT 




By Principal T. S. INBORDEN 

Joseph Keasby Brick Agricultural, Industrial and Normal School 

Bricks, North Carolina 

President of the North Carolina Negro Farmers Congress 

President of the North Carolina Negro Historical Association 

Twenty-seven years Principal of Brick School 



August 15, 1922 Supplementary to the Brick News 



A TRIP TO CALIFORNIA 

And Several Addresses to the 

Negro Farmers' Congress of 

North Carohna 

BRICK SCHOOL IN RETROSPECT 




By Principal T. S. INBORDEN 

Joseph Keasby Brick Agricultural, Industrial and Normal School 

Bricks, North Carolina 

President of the North Carolina Negro Farmers Congress 

President of the Noi-th Carolina Negro Historical Association 

Twenty-seven years Principal of Brick School 

MITCHELL PRINTING CO.. RALEIGH 



INTRODUCTORY 

April 22, 1922. 
My Dear Friend .- 

You will be interested to know that I am again back from my five 
months trip to the North and Northwest. While away I covered, accord- 
ing to the railroad time tables, about twelve thousand miles. This took 
me through most of the Northern States and the New England States 
and in the Western States. 

I left Chicago the 21st of January and visited and stopped at the fol- 
lowing places: St. Paul and Minneapolis in Minnesota; Aberdeen in 
South Dakota ; Marmarth in North Dakota ; Miles City, Three Forks, 
Butte and Gerson Hot Springs in Montana ; crossing Idaho into Spokane, 
Washington. We crossed the Continental Divide a few miles east of Butte 
in four or five feet of snow in an elevation of six thousand feet above sea 
level. This train was pulled by poAverf ul electrical engines for six hundred 
miles over the most picturesque mountains in the world. We crossed 
the tributaries of the great Missouri River more than a score of times, 
and scaled many mountains, from the highest elevations and glided down 
into Seattle, Washington, into an elevation of fifteen feet on Puget 
Sound. Trees were budding and many flowers were already in bloom. 
After a few days we went to Tacoma in Washington and Portland in 
Oregon. Then we were oif to Sacramento, San Francisco in California. 
The course took us from the beginning of the Sacramento River in the 
Siskiyou and Shasta Mountains to its mouth at San Francisco Bay or to 
the Straits of Carquinez, landing us at Port Costa for Richmond, Berkley 
and Oakland in Alameda County. At the fine Oakland pier we disem- 
barked from the train and took the ferry boat four miles to San Fran- 
cisco, passing the Government Island to the left looking right into the 
setting sun through the Golden Gate. 

A few days here in this beautiful setting and we were off for Los 
Angeles, five hundred miles to the south still. Fresno, Bakersfield, 
Tehachapi, across the snow-clad Sierra Madre ten thousand feet eleva- 
tion and in sight of Mount Whitney four thousand feet higher. Down a 
mountain incline for fifty or more miles to Mojave Desert into Death 
Valley and to Sanfenando and Burbank and Los Angeles. Then to the 
Orange Show at San Bernardino, passing on our way Pomona, San Ga- 
briel, Claremont and Garrett & Co.'s grape vineyards, one of the homes of 
the Virginia Dare Extracts. Mr. Garrett is an Enfield man. We could 
spend only a few days at Los Angeles, then we were off the Coast Route 
to San Francisco again. Santa Barbarbara, Ventura, Gaudaloupe, San 
Lois Obispo, Delmonte, Santa Cruz, San Jose, Santa Clara, Red Wood 
Cities are familiar names. It took three steam engines to pull the train 
over the mountains coming north. A few days later we were off again 
for Sacramento, and Salt Lake City in Utah, and Glenwood Hot Springs 
in Colorado. Passing Florence we came into sight of Pike's Peak more 
than a hundred miles east of us, and passing the water-swept city of 
Pueblo and Colorado Springs into Denver the mile high city. A few 
days spent here and I was off again for Phillipsburg and Des Moines 



and to Chicago, coming through Xevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, 
Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Illinois, I spent a few days in Chicago, 
Avas held up on my arrival from the station to my stopping place in 
Chicago, but was not robbed. My outcry for ''Police and help !" thwarted 
their plans. Then I was off to Washington City and home on the 22nd 
of March. At the station I was overwhelmed by the students, teachers 
and friends in the community who had come to welcome me home with 
school yells and band music. 

I traveled two thousand miles in California alone. I gave twenty- 
eight addresses, attended eight recitals, fourteen lecturesj four theaters 
where persons of color were the stars, three ministers' meetings, one 
annual conference, the meeting of the American Missionary Association, 
the annual meeting of the Connecticut Congregational Association, visited 
ten colleges and schools, nine state capitals, seventeen city, state and 
municipal and school museums, twenty public markets. In addition I 
talked with Japanese and Chinese farmers, fruit growers, cattle men, 
sheep men, miners, negro ranchmen. I met them on the trains, on the 
farms, in the hotels and restaurants, on the boats, on the streets, in the 
stores, markets, and everywhere. I came back Avith a few pounds less in 
weight, but with a vision that money could not buy. 

I am very truly, T. S. Inborden. 



JUST A MINUTE 

I am here for only a couple of days. It is a long ways from Bricks, 
North Carolina, to Seattle, Washington. I still have two thousand 
miles before me before I turn my face eastward. One gets an idea of 
this great big country only by traveling over it, as I have done for the 
j)ast three months. He can get it no other way. Such a trip ought to 
condition every young man graduating from an Eastern college. 

Here we go from Bricks in the eastern part of North Carolina to 
Washington City. The Atlantic Coast Line train takes us through the 
most historic setting of the Coastal Plains of that eastern section into 
the foothills of the Old Dominion, through the Civil War battlegrounds 
of national fame, up the historic Potomac, passing Richmond, Fred- 
ericksburg, the rustic triangular monument to the great general who in 
his unfortunate retreat met death at the hands of his own men, into 
Alexandria, the most historic and conservative town of the pre-war days. 
Alexandria, the other end of the old pike leading from the "far west" 
through Winchester Town seventy-five or more miles away. This old 
pike was put in history by Sheridan's ride, twenty miles away from 
Winchester Town. 

Well, we cannot stop in Washington City. It needs nothing that I 
can say. From Washington we went up into Old Virginia. Taking the 
Southern train we went through the Virginia Valley and the Shenandoah 
Valley. The trip took us right through the heart of the battle-fought 
country of Manassas, Bull Run, over "Goose Creek," "Painter Skin," 
"Jeffries" — creeks that are well knoAvn to all Virginians. We went right 
into the heart of the Old Blue Ridge, and looking down on Harper's 
Perry, Winchester, Middleburg, Leesburg, Upperville, Berryville, the 
Shenandoah River, on to Washington itself, sixty miles away. Here are 
five counties : Fauquier, Loudon, Warren, Clark, Jefferson and others in 
the distance, covering an area ol more than ten thousand square miles of 
the finest country in the world, all to be seen from one level space with- 
out moving ten feet on this historic old mountain. Corn, wheat, cattle, 
and sheep, fill her valleys. There is no part of these valleys and moun- 
tains that cannot, and that do not, grow the finest apples and peaches 
that are grown in the world. (I am saying. this in Seattle, Washington.) 

I went back to Washington from this fine country, and from Wash- 
ington to Jersey City. From there I went over to New York and 
Brooklyn, and out on Long Island Sound. From New York I went to 
Springfield, Mass. From Springfield I went to the great meeting of the 
American Missionary Association, which was held at New London, 
Connecticut. From there I went back to New Haven for Armistice Day 
and to see Marshal Foch receive his degree from Yale, and the great foot- 
ball game where there were eighty thousand people. I went back to New 
York again, where I put in two very profitable weeks studying racial 
and living conditions. 

From New York City I went to Rochester and put in several days 
speaking here and there to small groups of people. From there I went 
to Batavia for only a few hours, and then to the city of Buffalo. From 



Buffalo to Cleveland and Olx'rliii, Ohio, and in two weeks on to Detroit, 
Mich. A few days spent in Detroit, and I was on my way to Ann Arbor, 
Jackson and Kalamazoo, Mich. I reached Chicago a few days before 
the Christmas holidays. After the Christmas vacation I visited the high 
schools of Gary, Indiana, and put in another week attending the Mid- 
Winter Conference of Congregational Workers of the United States, 
Only three oth^r colored men were in attendance at this conference. 
They were Dr. Alfred Lawless, of New Orleans ; Dr. Kingsley, of Cleve- 
land ; Dr. C. W. Burton, of Chicago. 

We learned in this great Mid-Winter Conference that there are other 
problems besides the Negro problem. Indeed, he was scarcely discussed 
at all. 

Immediately after the Conference I turned ray face westward. It did 
not seem safe that I should go alone to buy ray ticket and to have my 
money put into travelers cheques before leaving, so our good friend, Mr. 
J. E. Wade, of the police force, offered his services and accompanied me 
to the bank and ticket office. Mr. Wade was formerly from Elerby, 
N. C. He and his nephew from Bichmond County are giving fine serv- 
ices on the police force of Chicago, I was told that they have about a 
hundred colored men on the police force. All of these men are giving 
excellent service. I was surprised and glad to see in many of the largest 
business houses in Chicago our colored men and women doing business 
over the counters, I saAV them in the shipping houses and in the ticket 
offices. In the city postoffice of Chicago I was told by one of the 
"checkers" that out of about eight thousand or more employees that 
nearly two thousand were colored. I Avas escorted through every depart- 
ment of the great i^ostoffice and saw the men handling the nine hundred 
tons of mail that go through the office every day. Many of the men I 
knew personally, and some were relatives. Most of the men were experts 
at their job. A very large number of them are graduates from our best 
colleges. All of them were fine looking, well groomed men. They Avere 
not the least in appearance when compared Avith the other racial groups. 

From Chicago I took the Chicago, Mihvaukee and St. Paul train to 
St. Paul. The glacial swept areas of Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota 
abounds Avith natural resources aside from the farm products. This is 
a community of Avheat, corn and flour mills. It is the home of the AA'orld's 
best packing houses. Minnesota is the synonym for "Gold Metal"; it 
also says the last Avord on poultry feed and products. I Avas shoAvm 
through a sanitary packing-house Avhere nearly or quite a thousand peo- 
ple Avere given employment. Coffee, tea, spices and sugar and other com- 
modities are shipped in dailj^ by the train loads and made into new 
products, repacked and shipped out daily to all parts of the world. The 
amount of all sorts of candy, cakes, etc., handled Avas a revelation. 
Machinery has taken care of every operation in this great establishment, 
except the absolute thought of man. To the luiitiated it might seem to 
think also. The Avorld's best brand of cheese comes from these parts 
also. I was surprised to learn that one little community east of St. Paul, 
in Wisconsin, called Bio, shipped tAvo years ago more than two hundred 
and tAventy-fiA^e thousand dollars AA'orth of the finest grades of tobacco. 

Some of the soldier boys Avill be interested to know that some of the 
buildings, probably most of them, at Camp Douglass were still intact 
as AA'e sped by them through the cliffs and dells. 



From St. Paul we turned our face westward for a two thousand mile 
jaunt on one of the best equipped and finest trains that ever rolled the 
iron. Not a minute late on its own account, up hill, down grade, across 
deep canyons, under the mountains, over the top of the mountains, 
spanning valleys, across the river beds and lowlands, with the same speed, 
whether in eight feet of snow on the Cascade Mountains or whether there 
is no snow, and on to the Pacific Coast, Pulled by the most powerful 
electric engines in the world, she leaps onward by the touch of her engi- 
neer like a thing of life and thought. 

Our first stop was in Aberdeen, in South Dakota. It was night on our 
arrival, and I left the train to spend the night for the rest, so that I 
might have the day to see — yes, just to see. I had been to Aberdeen in 
1909 and knew what to expect. The porter advised me not to go out 
without wrapping up well, as it w^as about twenty degrees below zero. 
I went to the first place where the sign read "hotel." I was comfortably 
located, and after I had gotten a lunch thought I would find the school 
where I once spoke, but before I had gone very far I decided that my 
room was the best place for a stranger in that sort of weather. My face 
could not have been colder if it had been buried for twenty minutes be- 
tween two blocks of ice. This particular community is noted for its fine 
quality of white potatoes. They are grown in great quantities, and they 
are the last word in potato growing. There are none any better any- 
where else in the world for flavor and texture. 

In a country so cold and bleak one would not expect to find much 
vegetation. Quick maturing crops of wheat and corn are grown. Hogs, 
cattle and sheep abound. For hundreds of miles in every direction there 
is absolutely nothing but a barren track of land which affords great 
quantities of the finest hay, which grows naturally. Every mile looks 
for the w^orld just like the one from which you have just come. There is 
nothing to break the monotony of the landscape except the monotony of 
another one. The porter or conductor comes in and says, "Twin Brooks," 
"Stone Falls," "Odessa," etc., and you look out when the snow does not 
blind the view and you see nothing but a few houses, a wheat elevator, 
or a lot of sleds drawn by two or four horses ; not a tree except perhaps 
a few planted by the government agents. As you reach the ISTorth Dakota 
line not a tree to mark even the site of the little towns that may be more 
pretentious. 

At Marmarth we come into Montana at an elevation of 2700 feet, 
having put behind us nine hundred and ninety-five miles since leaving 
Chicago. We have already passed Wakpala, an Indian Reservation, and 
school. These are easily in sight. We have also left the Missouri Kiver 
and the Little Missouri River behind. We come into Musselshell Divi- 
sion, and soon cross the Yellowstone River. Miles City is our station 
for the night. It is nearly tAvelve hundred miles out of Chicago with 
2300 feet elevation. Several smalle'r tributaries to the Yellowstone 
River are passed. Small shrubbery and a few trees in the river courses 
are a great relief to the landscape. But before we reach the "City" to 
which we are destined for the night we come into "Bad Lands." Here 
nature went into contortions and left an awful frown upon her face. 
I asked the white porter, a very fine fellow (a Lutheran by faith), what 
was the matter with the country. He said "This is Bad Lands." 



Miles City Avas not a bad looking city. It had all the modern im- 
provements. For several hundred miles we followed the valleys of the 
Musselshell River and the Yellowstone Kiver, crossing and recrossing the 
rivers and valleys, sometimes over a high mountain and then almost 
precipitously down and under another mountain, only to rejoin the river 
again through another tortuous valley. We reached the Rocky Moun- 
tains Division at Harlowton, Montana, thirteen hundred miles Avest of 
Chicago at an elevation of 4,000 feet. If you have any heart trouble you 
Avill knoAV that something outside in the physical Avorld has happened 
before you get here. On Ave go over the "Summitt of Big Belts" literally 
up, up, up, around this curve, across that ravine, up by this tall hill, 
finally on the top, and you look back for five, ten, fifteen or tAventy miles 
and you see the ribbon of track you have spun out. You see the thou- 
sands of Avaste acres of snow and the cattle hugging the hills for protec- 
tion against the winter's cold. They are inured to it. Ours w^ould die 
the first night out. The reader would get sleepy before he had spent one 
hour out there. That is the way you freeze to death; you just get 
sleepy. We pass Ringling, the Montana Canyon, and again miles further 
Montana Canyon, Avith rocks projecting hundreds of feet above you, still 
we speed along and cross the great Missouri River seven hundred miles 
aboA'e Avhere Ave crossed a fcAv days ago. J^ear Eustis we cross the Jeffer- 
son, Madison, Gallitin rivers forming the Missouri River. Bull Moun- 
tains have been left three hundred miles behind and still we speed along. 
Our horse neither tires nor pants. They feed him "white coal" generated 
at great substations from fifty to a hundred miles apart. Generated by 
mountain streams in their mad rush to the great bosom of Avaters. 

At dark I Avanted to stop at some small mining toAvn for the night so 
as not to miss any scenery. The conductor advised against this because 
of the condition of the people and their accommodation for strangers. 
I listened, and stopped at his advice at Three Forks, almost fifteen hun- 
dred miles out from Chicago, and still 4,000 feet elevation. This was 
in a valley of farming land of more than three hundred thousand acres 
of the best farming land in Montana. The great valley Avas very beauti- 
ful, Avith the mountains ten, tAventy, thirty, fifty and a hundred miles 
aAvay in CA^ery direction, silhouetted above the clouds, and dotted Avith its 
OAATi shadoAvs. As the sun came up from the east and spread its majesty 
over the snoAv^-clad peaks every one Avas made a diamond of beauty. But 
we Avere not to stay at Three Forks over Sunday. We are traveling on 
trains 15 and 17. If we leave 15 over night we take 17 the next morning, 
and so Ave had 15 or 17 every day. At 8:50 we departed in. very cold 
weather — ten degrees beloAv zero, they said. It was only three hours ride 
from Butte, Montana. I did not want to pass the highest point reached 
on the Avhole trip in the dark. I Avanted to haA'e my eyes open and see 
when I went OA^er the real top. Well I did. It Avas 10 :53 by my Avatch — 
1,505 miles out from Chicago, 6,322 feet elevation. 

The Avriter of the ''Ex-Colored Man" said Avhen he Avas in Paris Avith 
his landlord he Avas very fond of music, etc., and so one night he A\'ent 
to one of the finest theaters in the city. Soon after he had taken his seat 
a very aristocratic looking gentleman came in Avhom he had at one time 
seen at his mother's house in the state of Georgia. He Avas very small 
at the time he saAV him in Georgia, and he Avas sure it was the same gen- 
tleman. He had Avith him his beautiful Avife and a more beautiful 



daugliter. To his amazement tliey sat almost adjoining him in the 
theater so close that he might have touched them. They did not know 
him. He kne^v that it was his own father, and this beautiful girl just 
finishing high school was his own sister, flesh and blood. He wanted to 
speak, but conventionality and tradition had closed his mouth, and to 
save tragedy he arose and left in silence. 

I have looked forward all my life for just such an opportunity to see 
this great country, as I have now had, and as I am having, because I still 
have 5,000 miles ahead. Most of my younger life was spent in trying 
to get an education. Most of my grown life has been spent in missionary 
service on small salary, and with a family of children to educate and 
prepare for a larger life than I had the opportunity of having. This 
opportunity now comes to me through the officials and friends of the 
Am.erican Missionary Association under whose auspices I have worked 
for thirty-two years. It comes as an appreciation on their part for my 
long service. I may not have done everything they wanted me to do, but 
I have tried to follow the dictates of an honest conviction. 

When I passed over the great Continental Divide I remembered my 
dream of forty years. I knew no one and had no one to talk to about it. 
I looked into space and thanked the Lord of all of us that I had cast my 
lot where the rewards had been faithful and abundant. I felt like crying 
out in paroxisms of joy. 

We are still ''a-going." We reached Butte, Montana, at noon Sunday, 
January 29th. It was very cold, but I found a good hotel near the 
station, so that I did not have to be in the cold very long. I was advised 
and was quick in deciding that I would in an hour take the trip to Gerson 
Hot Springs, eighteen miles away. Several miles from the place I saw 
what seemed to be slnokestacks with steam pouring out each one. I 
found on arrival that these were just openings in the roof, forming 
vents for the steam from the hot water as it comes from the mountains 
at a temperature of 195 degrees. The water has wonderful healing 
properties. I did not take the bath because of the extreme temperature 
outside. The hot springs are very numerous in these parts of the coun- 
try. All the rivers were frozen several feet deep but here and there 
where the streams pass very close to the mountain gorges one can, see the 
temperature of the water change by the warmer currents coming right 
out of the hills. 

Butte is the largest mining center in the world. One hill is the richest 
hill in all the world — is worth more than all of Wall Street, New York. 
The bar-iron, copper, silver, gold, and other by-products probably go 
down to the center of the earth. I went 2,200 feet down, and I was then 
800 feet from the bottom of it. I was donned in a real miner's outfit, 
including a miner's acetelyne lamp. Our descending cage was about 
four feet square, and held four men. It was built to bring up twenty 
tons of ore about every minute of the day. State laws define hoAV fast 
human beings shall be brought up or taken down. The installation that 
operates this mine cost more than a million dollars. It is the finest 
electrical outfit I ever saw. The house in which the machinery is located 
that operates the pulleys, under air pressure, is more than a hundred 
feet square. When the signals are given, twenty-eight feet down, one 
man brings the load to the tenth of an inch exactness to any level in the 
pit or on top of the ground, a hundred feet high if necessary. Thousands 



of wheels, belts, pulleys, pistons, etc., move in every part of this building 
to the touch of one man. If he makes a single mistake it may cost one 
life or a thousand in the mine. It may cost a mint of money in destruc- 
tion. Efficiency, absolute efficiency is the only thing that counts. 

Five very large pumps about twelve feet square each bring up the 
surplus water from below. They are located many feet below the sur- 
face of the ground, and it is never cold down there. The water is 
charged Avith copper, and this disintegrates any other metals, so that the 
pipes must be lined with wood and brass. This water is run through 
long troughs over old tin cans and iron Avaste, Avhere the copper is de- 
posited and afterwards taken off. I did not have time to get all 
the details of the process. Mr. J. D. Rockefeller, I Avas told, OAvned most 
of the stock of this particular mine. 

In the morning of the same day I visited one of the best schools in 
this country. It Avas a city high school. Everything taught in this school 
leads to mining. That is the big job there. The youths are prepared to 
do the things they Avill have to do Avhen they leave school. Boys ten to 
fifteen years old are experts already in the machine shop. 

We left at noon Tuesday, and my destination Avas Spokane, Washing- 
ton. We crossed the Missouri River, the A^alley of the same name, and 
saAv scoi'es of apple orchards. ISTear East Portal we crossed Bitter Root 
Summit and Bitter Root Valley, also made famous by its fine aj^ples and 
vegetables. We passed again under the mountains two miles. Here we 
Avere eighteen hundred miles from Chicago in an elevation more than 
4,000 feet. At Superior Ave were delayed several hours in the night on 
account of a freight Avreck. We arrived in Spokane about noon Thurs- 
day. We crossed the Cascade Mountains in eight feet of snoAv. This was 
after leaving Spokane. We visited the Spokane Valley, another valley 
made famous by its apples. I talked Avith a banker about the products 
of the community. They are trying to get emigrants from the East to 
come into the community. It is a farming and lumber community. I 
visited the exhibits of farm products kept by the chamber of commerce 
of the city. They are Avide aAvake. I saAV all sorts of vegetables groAvn 
on irrigated land and by dry farming methods that Avould make our 
farmers take notice. I never saAv finer vegetables anyAvhere. They are 
groAvn under great pressure. 

From Spokane 1,900 miles Avest of Chicago, in an elevation of 1,882 
feet, we dropped doAvn here (Seattle) in a fcAV hours to 2,200 miles Avest 
of Chicago and to sea level. From eight feet of snow crossing into a 
temperature of 36 degrees above zero, l^o snow and no ice. 

February 2nd Ave arrived at Seattle. TavcIvc days and about tAventy- 
two hundred miles from Chicago. This is considered the chief city of all 
this part of the country. It has a population of about 350,000 people. 
Its scenic environment, Avith its background of mountains and its valley 
intersected by sounds, bays and rivers, make it the most beautiful city 
ill the world. It is called the ^'Floral Paradise." I saAv many floAA^ers 
blooming in the open. It is said to be the cleanest and best lighted city 
in the world. 

I Avanted to see Puget Sound, so the next morning bright and early I 
found my Avay over the netAvork of railroads on a high elevation above 
the streets to the fine pier several hundred feet aboA'e the Avater. Here 
I luid a fine vicAV of the Sound and the great expanse of Avater and moun- 

10 



tains yonder a few miles, and literally thousands of boats of every kind 
and from everywhere in the world. The place from which I made the 
observation was a fine room with large glass windows, leather seats, heat, 
restaurant, etc., to make the weary traveler rested and welcome. This 
was Puget Sound. This is where literacy has the highest rating of any 
American city. If any city is cleaner or better lighted I have yet to 
see it. 

In these parts there are billions of feet of lumber untouched by the 
despoiler. I saw fir trees measuring four and six feet in diameter. I was 
told they w^ere three and four hundred feet tall. I saw two men sawing 
.with a cross-cut saw, one on one side and one on the other side, and the 
diameter was so great that only one man could be seen below his head. 

The Sound itself is said to be large enough to contain all the navies 
of the world and still have more room. The diversity of scenery, its 
climate, air, beautiful sunshine, mountains, sounds, and inland water- 
ways, woods, flowers, parks, fine hotel, theaters, public markets, and city 
railway system, postoffice, and the State University, give that place a 
setting hard to describe in this limited space. The three or four public 
markets are works of art. One on Second Street was terraced, and is 
the cleanest market I ever saw, and I have seen a great many. The 
markets will generally indicate what the far,mers are doing. They show 
the best products raised in the community. The arrangement of these 
country products will give you an idea of their artistic values. The 
Japanese were in evidence everywhere. They were universally polite and 
clean. They may be ubiquitous, but they are certainly utilitarian. They 
know how to get the best results from the soil as farmers. They had the 
best things I ever saw from the farms. They are credited with having a 
lot of sense and of being very industrious. These are very important 
assets in the development of any community, whether in California or 
in J^orth Carolina. Having sense means having efficiency, knowing how 
to do. Industry means power and wealth. 

As much as I would have loved to linger here longer, I had to divide 
my time with other points of interest. I left there early Sunday morn- 
ing, the fifth of February, for Tacoma, about forty miles away. Through 
miles and miles of orchards of raspberries, loganberries and blackberries, 
apples and pears and walnuts, passing great canning and packing houses, 
irrigation projects, mining sections, etc., and at 10 o'clock the Olympian 
rolled into Tacoma. Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helena, Mount Hood, 
and Mount Adams, off in the distance had already come into view. You 
are overwhelmed by their vastness and grandeur. Their snow-capped 
peaks, timbered inclines and fertile valleys cannot be equaled anywhere 
else in the world. 

We are still on the Puget Sound. The city has a population of more 
than a hundred thousand souls. They represent every nationality under 
the sun. It has the finest harbor and the most equitable climate in the 
world. The rainfall is around thirty-five inches a year, which insures 
better farming conditions. The Chamber of Commerce of Seattle and 
Tacoma are vieing with each other as to which will show the best 
exhibits of the state. Their great varieties of wheat, corn, flax, rye, oats, 
grasses, barley, buckwheat, apples, pears, small fruits and nuts, and 
their by-products : honey, preserved fruits, tomatoes, and manufactured 
products, views and paintings of cattle and sheep raising, lumbering, 

—3 11 



etc., simply baffle the imagination. You want to sit and look for hours 
and write impressions in your notebook, and then go out and come 
back again and do the same thing as long as you have a minute to spare. 

Tacoma has a stadium that seats forty thousand people. ISJ'othing else 
like it in the United States except the college stadia at Cambridge and 
New Haven. Schools and churches are the finest in the whole country. 
It Avas my pleasure to speak twice the Sunday I was there in one of the 
largest and finest churches in the city (white), and in the evening to one 
of our colored churches. The museum contains pictures of the early 
pioneers and Indian history curios. It was in this community where the 
earliest white settlements were made. The stadium and Stadium High 
School are located on one of the highest points in the city overlooking 
Puget Sound, which is precipitously, several hundred feet at the base 
of the hill. Trains may be seen for miles and miles coming from the 
East and J^oi'th, and boats from Alaska, Seattle and Vancouver as they 
turn the western promontory. I traveled with an elderly gentleman who 
built almost the first house in that part of the city for the father of the 
present occupant, and I also had dinner in that house overlooking the 
stadium and the Sound. The minister living in the house is an eastern 
man, and his wife is the daughter of a missionary to Honolulu. She went 
over in the Morning Star soon after its construction forty years ago, in 
company with President Fairchild of Oberlin College. At that time she 
was a small child. 

The state of Washington produced in 1921 28,000,000 bushels of 
apples alone that were worth more than $30,000,000. ^Vt the same time 
New York is said to have produced 14,000,000, California 6,000,000, and 
Michigan 6,000,000 bushels of apples. At the time Spokane County, in 
which Spokane is" located, is said to have produced 80,000,000 bushels of 
wheat. I went through this valley, a part of Yakima and a part of 
Wenatchee valleys. One wonders at the great productivity of this coun- 
try when he thinks of the great mountains almost everywhere — nxoun- 
tains where absolutely nothing can grow. The valleys are protected by 
these mountains. They are for the most part virgin soil. Irrigation 
projects have brought the melting snow td the ripening fruit and grain. 
The sun, penetrating into these mountain recesses have brought color 
and flavor equaled by no other community. 

Pity it is that we cannot stay here to see more of this environment. 
We must go to Portland, Oregon. We pass Rainier National Park on 
the left closed to winter tourists, and the towering sentinels already men- 
tioned. We are in sight of them until we get to Portland, nearly two 
hundred miles away. Portland is a fine city of unusual Avealth, fine 
houses, parks, hotels, banks, more than two hundred miles of street car 
lines, beautiful stores and public buildings, and flowers, flowers, every- 
where flowers. The mountains back of the city are circled by beautiful 
drives and street car lines, and every sort of house that can be built on 
the face of the earth, terraced from top to bottom, trees, ferns, flowers, 
vines, form the most perfect menagerie of vegetation and of art that one 
can conceive. It looked like the composition of one mind. It Avas the 
cooperation of many minds for civic beauty. The view from Council 
Crest — see it once and you will never forget it if you have any imagina- 
tion. The Columbia Kivcr cutting in lialf and stretching away for miles 
in the distance, the towering snow-capped mountius already named above, 

12 



the beautiful Willamette Eiver whose course for several hundred miles 
we shall soon follow, the Cascade Range, thousands of acres of fine farms 
and beautiful farm homes spreading out in every direction as far as the 
eye can see, a flock of sheep, a few thousand cattle, a herd of ponies and 
horses, the weird whistle of steamers coming up the river, and trains 
passing up the several valleys, all seen from Council Crest give you a 
feeling of scenic beauty that you cannot overcome. What a paradise for 
botanists. How I would like to have lingered in that environment until 
the foliage came into their glory! The markets are again gems of 
beauty. One has to buy whether he needs anything or not. The sellers 
are so courteous and polite. The arrangement of the products are so 
unique and artistic ; they have so much and so great a variety ; the peo- 
ple handling the goods were so clean in their pure white garbs ; the 
tables and stands were immaculately clean; everything put on the 
market Avas absolutely clean and pretty. You just had to stop and taste 
here and there and buy. I bought here several kinds of honey for sam- 
ples, which I brought six thousand miles home. I carried it all the way. 
Sage honey, clover honey, alfalfa honey, apple honey, orange honey, 
olive honey, raspberry honey, etc. 

At night I saw a big roller machine actually scrubbing the streets. 
Beat that if you can. I saw it. The Chamber of Commerce gives out 
every year free literature telling about the products of the state, and they 
have a show of the farm and mineral products that simply cannot be 
equaled anywhere. The market stands I was told were owned by the 
city and are rented to the farmers and others on condition that only farm- 
grown products produced by themselves were to be on sale in them. The 
rent was just a nominal rent to encourage the farmer to bring his wares 
and sell it. 

The Southern Pacific train took us south from Portland. The road 
leads for many miles up the Willamette Kiver through the most beauti- 
ful valley, then up the Umpqua River, and the Umpqua River Valley, 
and into the Rogue River Valley. The climatic conditions are well 
adapted for grains, grasses, f rtiits and walnuts. The growing seasons are 
especially long, and there is not much danger from frost. The fruit 
orchards yield from five hundred dollars to a thousand dollars an acre. 
Some of course with less care, yield much less. The higher figures show 
the possibilities under the best care. On my way south I saw a great 
many apples thrown out in the fields. I was advised that the fruit asso- 
ciation were not getting their prices, and they were thrown away to 
save cheap sales. They picked last year 2,650,000 boxes of apples valued 
at $2,600,000. These apples were the Spitzenbur, Yellow N"e\\i:on Pip- 
pins, Jonathan, Rome Beauty. These are the varieties prized for their 
color, keeping quality, flavor and conformity to the best types. The trees 
come into bearing the fourth and fifth years, and increase their yield 
from one bushel to seven a year, and as they get older the increase may 
reach twenty boxes a year. Their apple pests are the same as ours. They 
must spray to get the best results. The trees are not large. The average 
yield to the acre is from three hundred to four hundred bushels, at a total 
cost of about forty and sixty cents a bushel. 

Large acreages of pear trees of the standard varieties are grown, and 
they are more prolific bearers. The yield is said to be higher per acre than 

13 



that of apples. I saw scores and scores of very large pear orcliards. The 
trees are less trouble to care for than apple trees. 

I saw thousands and thousands of trees in the Willamette, Umpqua 
and Rogue River valleys that baffled me to know what they were. They 
did not look like any sort of trees I had even seen, and yet I did not 
want to appear too ignorant to my fellow travelers. I had only one way 
to find out, and that was to ask somebody who knew. They were prune 
trees. The cost of caring for a prune orchard is said to be from five to 
seven dollars an acre. The average crojD an acre is about five tons. The 
average value per acre is from $75 to $250. About thirty million tons 
are produced, and the demand is growing. They have not begun to fill the 
demand. People are learning more than ever the food and medicinal 
value of this fruit. 

Xearly fifty million pounds of cherries are produced annually at a 
value of more than two hundred thousand dollars. They yield about six 
thousand pounds to the acre at a profit of from one hundred to eight 
hundred dollars an acre. In Western Oregon, the Upper Columbian 
Valley, and tlie southwestern part of the state peaches are grown on a 
large scale and at great profit. Grapes, strawberries, raspberries, black- 
berries, loganberries and currants are grown in great quantities. At La 
Grande, Oregon, there is a sugar beet factory whose capacity is three 
hundred and fifty tons daily. Beets are grown largely in that section. 
French walnuts are grown in large quantities. Seedlings are grafted 
with improved varieties. The largest I ever saw were in the markets. 
I stopped one night at Grant's pass and saw some of the largest and 
finest pumpkins that can be grown in the world. 

Stock raising probably stands at the head of the productive resources 
of the state. Great quantities of cattle, sheep, horses, mules, hogs, and 
even goats are raised. The income from this industry would be many 
millions of dollars. Poultry is grown all the year, and millions of dollars 
are realized yearly from dairying. The annual output of honey is around 
two million pounds, averaging more than three hundred thousand dollars. 

I have said nothing about the fisheries, the fertility of the rivers, lakes 
and bays, and the lumber conditions. There are about twenty million 
acres of land in Oregon unappropriated, waiting for brain and bra^^^^. 
It belongs to the government. You may have it if you will qualify and 
meet the conditions. 

On my way to San Prancisco I had planned to stop at Eugene and 
see the State University, but I found that I could not do so without very 
much delay, and also because the weather conditions were bad. It is a 
railway center of considerable importance. Passing Cottage Grove we 
crossed the Umpqua River and went up the valley some distance, and up 
tlie Rogue Valley close by the river of the same name into Grant's Pass. 
Here I preferred to stay all night so as not to miss any view or things of 
interest. We were never out of sight of picturesque scenery and moun- 
tains of great height and beauty. Orchards and fine gardens of vegeta- 
bles were ever in sight. Our train has taken us into Cow Creek Canyon, 
beautiful and picturesque. Grant's Pass is the fruit shipping center for 
this part of the state, and I saw many packing houses. On to Ashland 
at the foothills of the Siskiyou, where the lythia water and mineral 
springs attract your attention as you pull into the station, and all get out 
to try the water as it somes fresh up into the glass receptacles for you to 

14 



drink. Ahead and around you on every side nothing but mountains 
towering a mile high. You wonder how you are to scale that tower in 
your front. Your train takes on another engine, possfbly two, and off 
you go ujD the Rogue Yalley till the Rogue River is lost in the mountain 
stream. When you can go no further your train cuts across the head of 
the valley on a high bridge and climbs the opposite mountain parallel to 
the track you have just come on the other side, going directly north, ex- 
actly reversing your course. We zig-zag up that mountain for an hour till 
we reach an elevation of nearly teu thousand feet. All this time we are 
in sight of Ashland, fourteen miles below, lying placid, warm and quiet. 
The snow plows are busy keeping away the snow and the men are clad 
in the warmest sheep skins from head to foot. A mile off to the left, a 
thousand feet higher, is ''Pilot Rock," lying as if it had been hurled by 
some powerful giant. This is the landmark that guided the early pio- 
neers and Indians in their early explorations through that unknown 
country. Freeing our train from her extra engines, we sped off at a 
tangent through a fine growth of timber and cut over land. This is the 
Shasta route, and we have just scaled the Siskiyou Mountains. Now we 
start down the slope, entering the Cantara Loop and crossing at the very 
head of the Sacramento River. 

Now we have crossed the line into California. Mount Shasta, the 
most majestic peak of the western continent, fourteen thousand feet and 
more, towers above us, and off at some distance. We enter Sacramento 
River Canyon and stop at Shasta Springs, which is a source of this river. 
There we got off the train and drank the finest water that ever came 
from the earth. This is probably the greatest summer resort on the 
Pacific Coast. I saw one rabbit sitting in his burrow on the side of the 
hill. The snow was falling terrifically. 

Miles and miles down this canyon we go, passing ferns and moss hang- 
ing from a thousand crags. We pass Castle Crags away to the west like 
sentinels guarding our entrance. More than four hundred miles we go, 
following this tortuous river valley until it spreads out into San Francisco 
Bay. We pass Chico, a community of fruit interest and great vineyards. 
If one will look at the map of the state of California he will see that 
almost all the state is included in two great valleys, especially in the 
northern part of the state called JSTorthern California. These valleys 
lie north of the Sierra Madre Mountains, which form the natural divide 
between Northern and Southern California. These are the valleys of 
Sacramento adjacent to the Sacramento River, which runs the entire 
length of the valley and into the Straits of Carquines and into the San 
Francisco Bay. The other valley is San Joaquin. In the first of these 
is located Sacramento, the capital of the state, and in the second valley 
is Fresno, near the southern part of the valley, and also Bakerfield. 

We are told that about half of the cultivated land in California, or that 
which may be cultivated, is in the valleys. They form more than four- 
teen million acres. They are about four hundred and fifty miles long 
and more than forty miles wide. The Sacramento and San Joaquin 
rivers are the drainage for this great basin. These two great rivers 
come together near Walnut Grove, one from the south and one from the 
north. I traveled the entire valleys of both these rivers. There are 
almost three millions of acres in the Sacramento Valley alone, and from 
my observation not more than half of it seems to be in cultivation. 

15 



Thousands of acres of it are in citrous fruits and other fruits and 
Avalnuts. At the same time of my visit large areas of the tAvo valleys were 
under water. The lands are rich and yield readily to various kinds of 
cultivation. 

When the overflow from the rivers during the rainy season is con- 
trolled, there is no reason why these lands should not be more valuable to 
the state. Large areas are still in the formation, and look as if they 
might make great rice plantations. I heard w^hile out there that some- 
thing Avas being done to get Japanese farmers to work these low areas into 
rice farms. 

I stopped one night at Redding. Tliis is only a few miles inside of 
the state line. It was here that the "Gold Rush" was made in 1849. 
Some of the old settlers are still here and remember the "rush." I was 
told that two per cent of our gold still comes from this community. It 
was here that T really saw the first sign of California. The next morning 
after my arrival, while waiting for my train, I saw oranges in the parks 
and about the homes near the central part of the town. Magnolia trees 
and palm trees showed that we were in a new and strange country. 
Tropical plants of one sort or another can be grown from one end of 
the state to the other. One man said that he could pick oranges at the 
same time watch the melting snow on the nearby mountains. 

The rainfall varies from fifteen to thirty inches, whether in the lower 
or upper part of the state. Irrigation projects are on foot, and furnish 
all the water needed for the crops. As the acreage increases these 
projects will grow. Sacramento River and Feather River are the main 
sources of water for this upper country. I traveled through both of 
these valleys and to the very mouth of the rivers. 

We arrived at Benccia late in the afternoon, and the entire train is put 
aboard the largest ferry boat in the forld, and carried across four miles 
to Port Costa, across the Strait of Carquines. We pass Richmond, Berk- 
ley, Oakland. At Oakland we pull into the Oakland ferry and disem- 
bark again to a large ferry boat, and in twenty minutes we are in the 
city of San Francisco. We are here for only a few days, then we leave 
for the southern part of the state. We reserve our impressions of the 
city till our return. 

The other valley further south is supposed to be eleven thousand 
square miles, and has about seven million acres of arable land. It is a 
boundless area and productive of the greatest quantity of oranges, olives, 
grapes, etc. We spent a part of two days at Fresno, and addressed the 
colored Baptist Church at night. There are some colored farmers in 
that section who are doing well on their farms. We regretted A'cry much 
that we could not count them by the thousand. They are altogether too 
few. 

Bakersfield, which is in the southern part of this valley, is a great oil 
section of the state. There are four such centers in this state. Their 
, combined output a few years ago was ninety-two million barrels. Oil 
has taken the place of coal in almost all the industries of the state. The 
refineries are seen almost everyT\'here. Stock raising, grapes, orange 
orchards, peach orchards, olive orchards, fig orchards border every road. 
I saw at least one flock of sheep numbering more than three thousand. 

We crossed the Sierra Madre over the Tehachepi loop at an elevation 
of more than seven thousand feet. Going down the mountain we passed 

16 



into the great Mojave Desert. Death Valley, 290 feet below sea level, 
forms a part of this desert. There must be several thousand square miles 
of country in this area, and I would not give fifty cents for the whole 
of it. The discovery of oil may give value or the irrigation projects may 
save it for farm developments. Yucca, sage and sand seemed to be its 
chief products at present. Mojave, Lancaster and San Fernando are 
our next stop. A few hours later we are in Los Angeles. 

The object of my trip West was to study farming conditions with 
reference to the colored people and to acquaint myself with living condi- 
tions in that part of the country. 

There is little that I can say about Southern California, and Los 
Angeles especially, that the world does not know. It is separated from 
the northern part of the state by the range of mountains already referred 
to, known as the Tehachepi Mountains, which are a part of the Sierra 
Madre. There are seven counties south of this mountain divide. It has 
a reputed population of more than six hundred thousand people. They 
represent every nationality. There are forty-five thousand colored peo- 
ple in the city. The state as a whole is the most cosmopolitan I ever saw. 

I wanted to take some data from the printed matter sent out from the 
Chamber of Commerce. The products of the county must measure in a 
very large way the industry and happiness of the citizens. 

It is the leading county in the United States in the value of all crops. 
It ranks first in the value of farm property, in the value of all farm 
crops, in the value of fruits and nuts, hay and forage, dairy prducts, 
bearing lemon trees, beet sugar production, and in bearing olive trees. 
It ranks second in poultry, bearing orange trees, irrigation enterprise, 
and walnuts products. 

The conduit which brings the city water for more than two hundred 
miles was built at a cost of tAventy-five million dollars. There are four 
trans-continental railways that enter the city of Los Angeles, and prob- 
ably a dozen other smaller lines. They have more than twelve hundred 
miles of improved streets and more than nine miles of sewer. There are 
twenty-five public parks. I visited a number of them. They have more 
than five hundred miles of electrical car lines and more than a thousand 
miles of electrical lines running to all parts of the county. Their schools 
are the best in the whole country. They have hundreds of churches that 
are well attended. 

I took daily tours to many of the surburban towns in twenty and thirty 
miles radius. Culver City, Santa Monica, Venice, Beverly, Hollywood, 
Long Beach, Redondo, Pasadena, Pomona, Claremont, Ontario, San 
Gabriel, Burbank, etc. These are all beautiful spots. Some of them are 
real little cities with every modern facility. I thought at the time of 
my visit that if people who live under such an environment as I saw 
were not happy, they have no need to go to heaven when they die. They 
told me that I ought to have made my trip in the sununer when I could 
see the country in its glory. I went in an auto bus to San Bernardino 
seventy miles through the country to the orange show. It is called the 
Gate City to Southern California. The county itself is a wonder in its 
output of fruits and walnuts, oranges especially. I saw millions of 
bushels of the yellow fruit everywhere for miles and miles till the eye 
tired of seeing what I called an awful waste of nature's products. The 
city is called the commercial center of the orange belt. It is a beautifully 

17 



laid out city with soiui-tropical plants growing everywhere, luxuriantly 
beautiful. The show takes up more than an acre of ground, and oranges 
were blended in the most gorgeous display in every conceivable figure. 
Oranges, lemons, grape fruit and their by-products by the millions. 

The trip through the valley took me over the finest roads in the world. 
They could not be finer. I was more than interested to pass "Garrett 
and Company's" vineyards, one of the homes of the Virginia Dare prod- 
ucts. Mr. Garrett himself is an Enfield, jSI^. C, man. The extracts are 
bound to be right if it is "Virginia Dare." 

What is said of any one of the soutliern counties may be well said of 
any other, except perhaps the "Imperial Valley County." I did not go 
to that county, but from what I heard about the county it looks as if a 
special edict was issued from the maker of all the counties to do some 
special work on that county alone. It was the last county formed in the 
state, and its area is more than four thousand square miles. It is in the 
extreme southwest part of the state. The lay of the land, the soil 
itself, the climate, location, altitude make it the best place in the world 
for stock raising and fruit production. There are more turkeys grown in 
this one county than in other similar sections in the world. 

I was very much impressed with the fine school houses and churches. 
No money or care seemed to be lacking in the construction of these 
important centers. Every one I saw in the country or city was decked 
with profusive growths of shrubbery and flowers. While I was in 
Spokane, the city claimed the lowest death rate per thousand of its popu- 
lations. When I was in Seattle that city claimed the same thing. When 
I was in Tacoma they claimed they had the lowest death rate; when in 
Sacramento they claimed to have the lowest death rate. In San Fran- 
cisco they claimed the lowest death rate; Oakland claimed the same; 
Los Angeles claimed the lowest also. Wlien we were crossing the Techa- 
chepi Mountains ten thousand feet elevation I saw a fine graveyard up 
further on the side of the hill, and I Avas surprised. They might have 
been soldiers killed in the war. One almost wonders why folks should ever 
die in such a beautiful country. Conditions are so good for living right 
along. Good churches, excellent schools, clean cities, perfect climate, all 
must contribute greatly to long life. They ought to be happy, but hap- 
piness cannot be bought with luxuries; it contributes more than anything 
else to long life when other conditions are good. 

The city of Los Angeles is twenty miles from the Pacific Ocean, and 
I venture to predict that in less than twenty years the city will extend 
and include Venice, Santa Monica, Long Beach and all the little coast 
towns along the water front, and the largest ocean vessels will be doing 
business in the heart of tlie business section as they are in Seattle, 
Tacoma, Portland, San Francisco, Oakland. Their population Avill soon 
be in the millions. It is growing by leaps and bounds every day, every 
week and every month. Fourteen thousand people come there every year. 
The people are busy everyAvhere. They have the secret of getting a 
larger po])ulation. Create industrial interests and the folks follow. 
Good schools and good churches; a community in Avhich there is com- 
patibility between all classes and not hatred. These are the best drawing 
cards. 

One does not travel many miles in California Avithout asking questions. 
Many of the questions Avill have to be ansAvered by history. Cortcz, Juan 

18 



Eoclrigeez, Cabrillo, Don Gasper de protola, Fray Junipero Serre are 
familiar names in its early history. The country Avas known as Alta 
and Baja, which was upper and lower California. It began in the 
extreme southern part of the state and went as far north as the foot of 
man could tread. The old maps show the southern part of the state as 
being a part of Mexico. It was sometimes called the land of the Heart's 
Desire. To use the words of another it was in 1769, "That destiny 
marked Southern California for its own, ordering the fig and the vine 
to make soft the dessert wastes, lemon and orange bloom for the upland 
slopes, herds for a thousand hills, living water to make green the sun- 
browned land ; and, last, not the dream of seven mythical cities of gold, 
but the bright reality of thrice seven times seven golden cities that now 
throb with the tides of commerce and the tread of countless feet." 

At the beginning of its history the King of Spain ordered that in 
order to make the country safe for Spain and its religion, that missions 
should be established. Under the orders of the great Catholic church 
fifteen or more missions were established — fifteen of them along the coast. 
My trip back to San Francisco, five hundred miles north, took me along 
the Pacific Coast in sight of many of these missions. We follow what 
was called the "Highway of the King." Those we passed were San 
Buenaventura, Santa Barbara, San Miguel, and Santa Clara. The 
southern part of the state especially owes a lot to these early missionaries. 
They gave harbor to the traveler, irrigated the land and started the early 
settlers and Indians to farming. 

From San Francisco to Los Angeles along the coast is a country backed 
by mountains of great height and beauty with slopes and valleys sur- 
passing any description. For hundreds of miles our train slipped right 
along the edge of the Pacific waters, sometimes forty or a hundred feet 
above these waters, sometimes nearer, then off on a hill top, then across 
an arm of the sea, then headlong toward the water as if to go right into 
it, only to swerve around some high hill and then out into some beautiful 
valley. You have to see it to appreciate it. 

Passing San Fernando, Oxnard, Ventura, we come to Santa Barbara 
in Santa Barbara County. The county is mountainous and has four 
large valleys. The valleys are the Santa Ynez, Los Alamos, Lompoc, 
and Santa Maria. The last named valley is said to have four hundred 
squire miles, and can support ten times its population. Mustard seed is 
the leading agricultural product in the county. The whole county is 
well adapted to all vegetables and fruits that are common to that part 
of the state. I saw many orchards of great size. It is said that three- 
fifths of the prunes and three-fourths of the apples grown in the state 
grow in these valleys adjacent to the coast. This is due to the fact that 
perhaps the rainfalls is greater than further inland. Printed matter on 
this section tell us that the products of this coast range are the following : 
beet sugar, wheat, barley, hay, garden seed, oil, coal, asphaltum, cement, 
lime, live stock, butter and cheese, fruits, berries, vegetables, olive oil, 
walnuts. 

I saw great flocks of sheep, cattle and horses. Millions of wild ducks, 
and we were never out of sight of sea gulls. They are the scavengers on 
land and water. I was fortunate in meeting people here and there who 
could give me lots of the sort of information I wanted. 

_4 19 



As our train rounded the coast of Santa Barluira we caught sight of 
the Islands of Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel. They may have 
been thirty miles to our left. 

Passing Point Conce])tion, a lightliouse here and there, a large open 
field in the actual making, or a sandhill thrown up in the past few 
months, crossing Santa Maria Kiver, leaving Lompoc and Ynez Valleys 
behind, we came to San Louis Obispo. Great quantities of oil are de- 
livered to this port for shipment. It is also the seat of the state poly- 
technic school. The rainfall here is very light, so that farming is not 
profitable. The w^estern slopes of the mountains for nearly a hundred 
miles afford good grazing for cattle and sheep. The water is largely 
mist from the Pacific Ocean with a very low rainfall. At this point our 
train leaves the sight of the coast and we climb the Coastal Range, being 
pulled by three powerful steam engines up an elevation of great height, 
more than seven thousand feet, and head into the Salinas and Santa 
Clara Valley. Salinas Valley has an area of 500,000 acres and the 
two valleys are almost 150 miles in length and fifty miles wide. We 
head toward "Bishop Peak" no less than four times climbing this moun- 
tain. We go down into Monterey County and follow the Salina River 
till Ave get to Monterey Bay near Del Monte. Santa Cruz is our next 
stop. We pass the Lick Observatory. We enter Santa Clara Valley 
crossing the mountains by the same name. We also pass Stamford L^ni- 
versity. We leave San Mateo County on the left and w^e speed along. 
We pass San Jose. Dark covers us, but at Redwood City we come into 
sight of San Francisco Bay and thirty miles further we are in San 
Francisco again. 

Five hundred miles are covered in about fourteen hours. The moun- 
tain ranges on both sides for several hundred miles, and the mountain 
on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other for several more hun- 
dred miles with an ever changing view of mountain inclines, rivers, 
valleys, irrigation projects here and there, the excitement of high eleva- 
tion, crossing some divide, farming operations throughout the entire 
course, fruit orchards, vineyards, gardens, great flocks of sheep, cattle, 
etc., chateaux, villages, mining operations and oil -wells. This is the 
panorama that simply bewitches the brain. It was such as this that the 
old colored preacher saw when he could no longer contain his emotions 
Avlien he said, "My God, look at that Glory." It is glory, and the man 
whose soul does not feel it is dead. Add to this the ocean scene with every 
angle the train makes, the steamers aw'ay out, the sunset behind these 
beautiful waters, and do you wonder that I have been dreaming this 
thing every night since I had the experience of it. It gets into your soul 
in some way. Some one has said, "Its all California from east to west, 
from north to south." I traveled two thousand miles in the state alone 
in every direction. The insi)iration is the same. 

I spok(> in one of the largest churches out there, heard some of the finest 
speakers in the world, saw some of the best shows, tramped over some 
of the orange, apple, fig, prune and berry orchards, bee and poultry 
yards. I visited soldiers' homes, city parks, city museums and farms 
in the country. I visited some of the best schools in the West and 
Northwest, including the state universities where they are really doing 
things. 

20 



Our eyes are now set toward the east and home. We are at San 
Francisco. Before we leave here we must revert to the lower part of the 
state again. The city of Los Angeles gets its water from a distance 
of more than two hundred miles from the snow-capped slope of Mount 
Whitney. They are the highest mountains in the United States, except in 
Alaska. The aqueduct is the largest in the world. The reservoirs are 
located in the San Fernando Valley. The pipes taking this water from 
its source to its outlet are eight to ten feet in diameter. Forty miles of 
this water is run in open lined canals. The line was pointed out to me 
many miles out of Los Angeles by a fellow traveler who knew the history 
of its construction. 

As one travels from north to south in this state and from east to west 
he is very much impressed with the great network of wires stretched 
everywhere, apparently reaching every farmhouse and factory. These 
are high-poM^ered electric wires carrying power to the industrial centers 
and to the farms for light and power- — for power more than light. Water 
has to be supplied to all the farms by irrigation. Where gravity does not 
do the work they must depend on pumps. The electric power is used to 
run the pumps. This power is generated by the mountain streams hun- 
dreds of miles away. The great power plants are largely owned by com- 
panies in the East. The irrigation projects, I presume, are the most 
wonderful in the world. I was advised that it cost about eight dollars 
an acre to get the canals into operation. 

Another interest of great importance in the groAvth of a country is the 
public roads. The roads were universally good. I traveled several hun- 
dred miles over the public roads in Los Angeles and San Barnardino 
counties, and for the long stretches I never saw better roads. 

Hollywood, which is really a part of the larger city, is a very pretty 
place. The streets are paved and there was not a shoddy nor a cheaply 
constructed house to be seen. I counted seven moving picture studios. 
I had no idea that these studios were built on so vast a scale. It seems 
that all the stars in the moving picture world have their studios here, and 
their fine homes- — Charlie Chaplin, Douglass Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, 
and others. Many of the great meat packers of Chicago, Omaha and 
Denver have million-dollar homes in or near this little suburb. The south 
side of Beverly Hills is covered with these expensive homes. 

There are a number of these studios in Culver City. This is a small 
place about fifteen miles toward the Pacific from Los Angeles. The domi- 
nating genius of it is Mr. Harry Culver. Ten years ago it was not born, 
and today it has a population of about two thousand people. The little 
railroad station, the little homes, the well paved streets and business 
houses, all show signs of taste and industry. Here is where "Fatty 
Arbuckle" got his start, and his studio is still there as a reminder. 
Several boulevards and electric lines pass through the town from Los 
Angeles to the Pacific Ocean, which is only five miles aAvay. Venice, 
with a dozen other settlements along the coast for ten or more miles, is 
the Coney Island of Southern California. Street cars and boulevards 
give one ready access to every part of the beach. They have all the 
eating houses, cheap shows, swindling games and junk shops for the 
attractions. 

The building lots in some of these little villages are sold under restric- 
tions. I was curious to know the restrictions. Houses that are put on 

21 



them must not cost less than twenty-five hiindred dollars, and no lot 
shall he sold to any one except purely Anglo-Saxon — a fine opportunity 
for unanimity of spirit and exclusiveness if not tested under the state 
law by some ubiquitous spirit. 

The problem of racial identity is a complex one in that country. I 
saw Mexicans who looked all the w^orld like jNTegroes, and Negroes who 
looked all the world like Mexicans. Their language was the only dis- 
tinguishing features, and in many cases the Negroes were better clad and 
better groomed. Negroes spoke the unadulterated English language. 
Their Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana or Texas previous en- 
vironment may have given them more of the Southern brogue. The 
Mexicans have clung to their Spanish tongue or some broken dialect. 
Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Porto Ricans and others form another 
group. Then there is another group from northern Europe and southern 
Europe belonging to the white races, and all these units speak a language 
of their own and folloAV largely the customs of their country. I won- 
dered who was fit and who could qualify under "The Restrictions." 

I will say nothing about Cbicago, but let me start at Butte, Montana. 
From Butte, Montana, to Spokane, Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, San 
Francisco, Oakland, Fresno, Los Angeles to the least city in the West 
there are all sorts of secret organizations and labor unions, selfish and 
otherwise, cliques and clans, to whom you must pay obeisance. Add to 
this the rankest Bolsheviki spirit, from the four ends of the earth, and 
you have a problem worth the attention of our best statesmen. 

I have been trying to get away from San Francisco, but it is hard to 
leave a community of so inviting environment. I can only name a few 
places now that are strikingly full of interest. Here is the Golden Gate 
Park, over yonder a short distance the Presidio, a little further around 
on the bay the Art Palace. Here is where the exposition was held. 
Do^Ti on the beach are the Sutro baths and cliff houses. From this fine 
eminence I saw seven seals, some sleeping, some bathing, some growling. 
They were on the rock a few hundred feet off the beach. Rural paintings 
in the museums, depicting wuld animal life in their natural setting with 
the mountain background, etc., were very real. 

The Southern Pacific station, located between Third and Fourth streets, 
and the ferry at the foot of Market Street, or at the head possibly, are 
works of art. They are the last word on station building. Market Street 
has four electric lines, and it is the leading thoroughfare of the city. 
Practically all the other streets of the city run into it at some angle. 
Sixteen blocks from the ferry is the civic center. Here are located the 
city auditorium, which seats ten or twelve thousand people, the court- 
house, one of the finest buildings in the state next to the capitol itself, 
the city library, and one of the high schools. These are'circled about a 
square which has a large fountain of flowing water. A very large area 
of the city was burned when the earthquake was some years ago, but this 
has been rebuilt so well and completely that one would never know it. 
I went over most of this area. 

I visited the University of California, which is located in Berkley, 
and had only time to go througli the library and agricultural building. 
They have a campus of 264 acres and an enrollment of ten thousand 
students. They have a theater that seats ten thousand people. They have 
a tower 302 feet high built of white granite. In this tower is located 

22 



the clock and chimes. They have in mind a large project for an athletic 
field and stadium. This will be located back of the college in the hills, 
which is the property of the college. Oakland is the San Francisco 
terminal of three trans-continental railroads. They are the Southern 
Pacific, the Western Pacific, and the Santa Fe. 

We take the Western Pacific for Sacramento at 9 o'clock in the morn- 
ing. At 2 o'clock in the afternoon we have made the trip of more than 
a hundred miles through the San Joaquin Valley and again into Sacra- 
mento Valley. We spend a part of two days here. The state capitol is a 
very fine building. The ground adjoining the building forms the finest 
park in the world. They have searched all the world to find trees and 
rare plants for this wonderful park. They have them from every known 
country and from every accessible community. Many of these trees were 
in full bloom the 28th of February when I was there. x\n officer of the 
grounds told me to find the keeper and he Avould give me all the cuttings 
I wanted, but unfortunately I could not find him. 

The city is located in rather a flat country. It has not been a great 
many years, geologically, since this was all under water and a part of 
San Francisco Bay. The two large rivers intersecting this valley have 
done their work in transporting silt, sand and debris from the mountains 
so well that most of the community is inhabited. The periodical overflow 
of these rivers still gives the traveler an idea that it is a part of the bay. 
I saw nearly a hundred miles of it under water, when I wondered how 
the farmers got from the house to the barn. 

We leave Sacramento at midnight on the Western Pacific Kailroad for 
Salt Lake City, Utah. We pass Marysville, which we have already seen 
on our southern journey, Oroville a little further north, and we follow 
the Feather Kiver and the Feather River Canyon. At daylight we find 
ourselves climbing the mountains again in snow several feet deep. The 
canyons are narrow and deep. The mountains above are beautiful, 
rugged. Vegetation and all sorts of timber come into sight again. The 
mountain streams are beautiful and clear. We arrive at Reno Junction 
about 10 o'clock in the morning. At Paxton we pass the little narrow 
gauge road leading into Indian Valley. The canyons look too narroAV for 
another railroad, but just below us clinging to the rocks and the moun- 
tains the little road leads off into another mining section and through 
gorges that look impassable. 

Of the more than two hundred stations along the way a great many of 
them are scarcely stopping places. A few are only places for the train 
crew to examine the cars. At Reno Junction, Nevada, we come into a 
country that is more open, and where the population is larger. 

We cross Honey Valley, Winnemucca Valley, scale the Virginia 
Range, and come into Smoke Creek Desert, ]3ass to the right of Granite 
Peak, and we come into Black Rock Desert. We pass what is called the 
Alkali Flats. This is a vast area of country with no vegetable growth 
of any sort. Nothing can grow on it. This reminds one of a very large 
bowl. We are moving along with great speed through the valley with 
the side of the bowl towering up at a tremendous height. We cross the 
Antelope Range in the northern part of Granite Spring Valley. A few 
miles further we come into the little town of Winnemucca. This is a 
railroad center and a cattle country. 

23 



We are in Hiimbolt County and follow Humbolt River. "We have 
passed Winneniueea Peak, Black Butte, the Eugene Mountains, and other 
points of interest and beauty. It would tire the reader to follow us for 
the next several hundred miles through this tortious river course, through 
large and small valleys, through mountain gorges, up the side of moun- 
tain ranges, over some of the highest peaks, under the tunnels and 
through great banks of snow. At Sulphur we passed several men and 
their horses with a big mountain lion they had just killed. The govern- 
ment pays twenty-five dollars for each lion killed. They are destructive 
to sheep. The Denver Sunday papers had the incident written up in 
the papers Sunday following the killing. 

We cross the Desert Range at Wendover, Utah, and strike out for 
forty-eiglit miles through the Great Salt Lake Desert, leaving Grass 
Mountain Summit to our left, we enter another range of mountains to 
emerge near the south end of Salt Lake. I do not know the area of the 
Great Salt Lake Desert, but it is a very large area numbering perhaps 
several thousand square miles of country. Water and irrigation would 
do it no good. It looks like desolation carried to the nth degree. It 
must have been at some time a part of the Salt Lake. It supports abso- 
lutely no vegetation of any sort. It is a barren waste. 

There is no other place in the Avorld exactly like Salt Lake and Salt 
Lake City. The city is eighteen miles from the Lake. One cannot 
drown in the water of this lake because of the density of the water. 

The city is one of the best laid out in the world. The mentioning of 
Salt Lake City suggests to you at once the Mormon Church. This church 
was organized in 1830 in the state of New York. The Mormons located 
later in Kirkland, Ohio, and there erected a temple which is said to be 
standing today. The church was persecuted, and Joseph Smith was 
martyred. It was moved from place to place, and finally Brigliam 
Young, its President, had a vision. He saw a land in the far west, and 
was directed to go to this remote country, far away from persecutions, 
where the colony might worship in their own w^ay. They started out 
for this far country, and were many months making the trip. The 
party was composed of 143 men, three Avomen and two children, and 
three colored servants. The names of all are on the fine monument at 
the head of the principal street of the city. 

When they had reached the place the President said, "This is the place 
I saw in the vision." The men were advised to go to work at once on 
small farms. The first year they grew a good crop by irrigation, but 
about the time the crops matured the cricket's came and almost ate the 
crops. The sea gulls from the lake eighteen miles away came and ate up 
the crickets. This saved the pioneers. They have in the sacred square 
a monument to the sea gulls. It is known as the Temple Square. The 
temple is the most unique building in the world. It Avas forty years in 
construction, and it cost a million dollars. It is built of native gray 
granite which was hauled by teams for more than twenty miles away. 

The Tabernacle standing in the same square is also a unique construc- 
tion. It will seat ten thousand people and has in it one of the best 
organs made. The building is a ''long, oval shape, dome top. The hear- 
ing qualities arc perfect. One may drop a pin in a hat or on the floor, 
and two hundred feet away, at the other end of the auditorium, hear it 

24 



fall." No iiails are used in its construction. Pillows support tlie arches, 
while wooden pegs tied with raw hide support the individual pieces. 

The gray stone Assembly Hall, where relics and art collections are 
kept, is also in the same square. 

One should visit the state capitol. It is located on one o£ the nearby 
mountains. This mountain is at the head of several streets and had an 
electric line running around it and to the top. The building itself is one 
of the finest in the country. It has large granite supports measuring 
three or four feet in diameter, twenty or more feet in length, of Georgia 
marble, polished to a finish, each weighing twenty-five thousand pounds. 
These great pillows were brought from Georgia on forty-six cars. 

One could spend weeks in this fine building studying the art of it and 
the great display of relics of the early pioneer life. Several Mormon 
sisters have charge of the collections, and they are very interesting as 
well as very entertaining. 

We leave salt Lake City, and forty miles east we come to Provo. We 
are more than four thousand feet in elevation. It is called the "Garden 
City." It is near the Wasatch Mountains. We pass through the Provo 
Canyons. This is unlike anything else we have seen. We climb the 
mountains overlooking a most beautiful valley ofi^ to the left with a very 
fine stream said to contain trout. There are fine homes and orchards 
and many flocks of sheep and cattle. There is some mining a few miles 
across the valley on the opposite mountain side. 

A railroad stretches across the valley to connect with this mine from 
the main line. A few apple orchards. Some fine red barns. The 
meadows evidently aftord a great deal of hay. Hundreds of stacks of 
hay, as green as if just cut, dotted the valley. We are in several feet of 
snow and being drawn by several massive steam engines. Up, up, up we 
go till we reach Soldiers' Summit, seven thousand and four hundred feet 
high. Your heart begins to beat a little faster, some one has the head- 
ache, another has bleeding of the nose. If you have slept all the way 
through the valley and up the mountains you will begin to wake up 
when you reach this high elevation. Unless your heart is seriously 
affected you do not need to worry, for you are in this elevation only a 
few minutes, when you begin to drop to noraml altitude for these parts. 
The snow is about six feet deep and sparkling. The air is fine and pure, 
and your mouth grows dry for some of the crystal liquid you have just 
passed. It comes from crags and crevices for more than a half mile 
above you, scarcely missing the sides of your train as it passes its narrow 
channel. 

A crowd of a dozen or more school girls get on the train. They are 
all the world like our own girls, only they were white, every one of them. 
They sang songs, made speeches, moved from place to place on the train, 
recited their lessons, talked kindly of their teachers and their fellows, of 
the loved ones they have left behind for a few months — they were just 
school girls, that was all. The tourists, including my lonely self, were 
glad to have this merry bunch — this innovation to break the monotony. 
They leave us at Green Piver, and we settle down again to our usual 
repose when we are soon disturbed by the news butcher saying, "The 
mountain ahead is one-half mile high, the canyon ten feet wide, just wide 
enough for the train to pass." "It is Castle Gate." The walls of the red 

25 



stone stand up like the walls of a sixty-story sky-scraper. On both sides 
these Avails tower up till your neck tires looking up at them. 

Here the engineers have defied nature. You follow the river and the 
canyon, sometimes on this side, sometimes on that side, rising and falling 
in elevation till you reach Mack, near the state line of Colorado at an 
elevation of four thousand and five feet. You pass through a valley 
widening out from a ten-foot gorge to forty or fifty miles, and absolutely 
fenced all around by these massive Avails for fifty or more miles as 
effectively as if done by the master hand of some giant. We follow Hog 
Back C^myon and a tributary of tlio Colorado River. We arrive at 
GleuAvood Hot Springs at 10 :oO at night, four hundred miles from Salt 
Lake City in an elevation of five thousand and seven hundred feet. We 
stop here for the night and take the G a. m. train the next morning for 
Denv(n-. 

We are on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. We pass up the 
Colorado River Canyon. The road is tortious, the stream abounds like 
the waters of "Galore," the mountain crags are high and precipitous, 
CA'ery foot has tested the skill of the engineer. It is wonderful. We go 
through Tennessee Pass, sight Mount Jackson toward the west. Mount 
Elbert to the left more than fourteen thousand feet high is seen. We 
leave Readville to the left and pass through the richest mining region in 
the world. Georgetown, Red Olifi", Fair Play, Piatt Ranch, Buena 
Vista, Cripple Creek, Anaconda Goldfield. All tbese are centers of 
mining interests. They abound in gold, silver, lead, copper, zinc, etc. 
We come south from GleuAvood Springs to Salida nearly a hundred miles 
and into the Arkjinsas River Yalley and folloAv this river to Florence 
and Pueblo. 

It will be remembered that in the summer of 1921 there was a cloud- 
burst in that section of the country, and Pueblo Avas in the midst of the 
washout. Hundreds of lives and millions of dollars worth of property 
Avere lost. The valley still shows great evidence of that destruction 
CA'eryAvhere you look. This Avas particularly true of the city itself. I 
stood under the pier of their fine station, and the high Avater mark Avas 
tAvo feet above my head. We are seven hundred miles from Salt Lake City 
and still seventy-five miles from DeuA'cr. We are at Colorado Springs. 
Denver is our destination for the night. As Ave leave Cannon City and 
Florence Ave sight to our north perhaps a hundred miles Pike's Peak. 
This is early in the afternoon, and Ave do not lose sight of that majestic 
Avonder of the Avorld until we have passed DeuA^er for almost another 
hundred miles. 

We spend four days in Denver very pleasantly and profitably. It is 
the ''Mile High City." We have left all the mountains behind. The 
community, including Colorado Hot Springs and Denver and Pike's 
Peak need no description from me. They are too Avell knoAvn. It is the 
healthiest place in all the Avorld. I saAv no graveyards, and I presume 
they are feAV and very far betAveen. The elevation is more than five 
thousand feet. We are now seven hundred and fifty miles east of Salt 
Lake City. DenA^er is a fine place in which to live. I am not so sure 
about the conditions of earning a living. 

We leaA'e Denver at 10 in the morning and stop for the night at 
Philli])sl)urg in Kansas. The country is practically all prairie land 
suited for cattle, horses and sheep, corn, AAdieat, and the grasses. It is 

20 



an open country with few trees exce^Dting tlie low sections and river 
bottoms. 

"We pass Lincoln City in jSTebraska and later the city of Omaha. We 
have already crossed the La Platte Eiver and now at Omaha we cross the 
Missouri River. Passing Council Bull in Iowa we speed along to Des 
Moines, Iowa, where we plan to spend the next night. We arrived late 
in the evening and left early the next morning for Chicago. The country 
was largely given to farming and stock-raising. 

We were in Chicago about two weeks, and were then off for Washing- 
ton City, where we spent another week, then we came home, arriving 
liere at Bricks the 22nd of March. A most cordial reception awaited me 
liere. I was met at the station by teachers, students and friends of the 
community, all led by the school band. 

Not many colored people on the Pacific Coast as compared with our 
eastern country. They are scattered here and there throughout the 
middle west. Most of those I saw looked as if they had good jobs and 
were busy. I saw a great many very nice homes of our colored people. 
I visited a great many places of business entirely colored. The colored 
ministers were all educated men. The colored churches were up to date. 
I spoke in a number of them, and the audience looked well groomed and 
happy. I quizzed the professional men, and they advised me that the 
outlook for the colored people generally was good. All advised that 
colored men going west ought to have some money to start a business. 

If colored men would go Avest and enter farming their opportunities 
would be unlimited. They ought to have money enough to carry them 
till their crops come to maturity. If they grow fruit it takes the young 
trees five years to come into bearing, and they must have something to 
depend upon during that time. At the same time there is no time of 
the year in California when a farmer cannot grow vegetables. There 
are fruit growers' associations that take care of everything the farmer 
grows. He can become a member of any of them irrespective of his color. 
He must have some money and some farming sense. There are forty-five 
thousand colored people in Los Angeles. Only a few are farming. There 
are not enough farmers to attract any attention. I am always sorry to 
see so many of our folks flock to the cities when the farms are offering 
so many opportunities for independence and a better living. 

There is nothing needed in the west so much as water and people — 
water and people. If they get the people the irrigation projects will soon 
give the water. They need not only people \yho are not dependent upon 
others for every move they make, but people who are industrious and 
who have the brain. 

We hear in the East a great deal about the Japanese. I hear more 
about them here than I heard on the coast. Out there they have the 
reputation of being industrious, smart and great organizers. I do not 
think those are bad qualities. They are qualities that we have been 
taught to prize. There is no reason Avhy we should prize them in one 
race and despise them in another. They are universally courteous. 
Some Northern people think they will get all the land. I saw millions 
and millions of acres of land in California alone that somebody n^eds to 
get and put to use. Then I saw other millions stretched four thousand 
miles and more across the iVmerican continent that will feed all the 
"world when brought under cultivation and development. 

27 



They tell us out West that all the mountains in that country are full of 
minerals. If that is true we have not touched the world's supply. From 
the unoccupied land I saw there must be enough to feed a hundred times 
our present population. In some of these states one can travel almost a 
hundred miles and not see a sign of human life except the little station 
settlements. Xew York, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and a few other 
cities are too congested for healthy environment, and some propaganda 
ought to be started by some organization or somebody to popularize the 
country and the farms. 

The spirit of competition in our large cities in any occupation is 
virulent. It is not worth the struggle. Manhood and womanhood is 
stagnant. It is truly the survival of the fittest. I never saw a JSTegro 
farmer in the South begging bread. Vast areas of our best farming land 
ought to be bought by this congested crowd filling our large cities. 

Our people go to the city because of the lack of compatibility of people 
in the community where they want to live. They may not like the other 
races out West, but there was great silence and a unanimity of opinion 
relative to an open expression of their hatred. Poor execution of the 
laws, open expressions of hatred, fear of personal molestation. These 
were the expressions I met in Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago. 

Norman Angell expresses it in his book, "The Fruits of Victory," 
when he gives the cause of the world's restlessness and war. He says they 
have resulted from our wrong thinking. We have got to be big enough 
to forget some things and start off right. Correct our thinking. I at- 
tended a Christian Science Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, and one of 
the tenets of their church is that if you have a pain just forget about it 
and it goes. It seems to work, for that church is doing a great business 
all over the country. That is what we have got to do in the political 
world and in the world where our relations interlock. We do not get 
anywhere by hatred and fighting. 

Every city and every town I visited from Spokane to Seattle to San 
Barnardino, seventeen hundred miles south is on a boom and every one 
you meet is a boomer. That is the way to build up a community or a 
city or a town, or anything else. I was not supposed to give any 
addresses while on this trip, unless there was some fine opportunity to 
make friends for the American Missionary Association and for Brick 
School. I could not aiford to let such opportunities pass even though I 
Avas out seeking recreation and rest and change. This opportunity came 
to me at least twenty-eight times. I was invited to speak twice in Dr. 
H. H. Proctor's Church in Brooklyn, X. Y. Dr. Proctor Avas a class- 
mate of the writer at Fisk University. He had one of the largest churches 
in all the South, the First Congregational Church in Atlanta. AMien 
the migration of colored people began to be a problem in the Northern 
centers, Dr. Proctor was called to Brooklyn to meet the impending 
onrush. He has projected one of the largest church enterprise in Greater 
New York, and his bringing the enterprise to a successfnl fruition will 
mean great things for New York and for the colored people generally. 

Dr. Proctor is a large man, mentally and physically, and he has a 
large vision. His vision is not larger than the times are demanding. 
Our church people are demanding a larger programme. Some of our 
churches, perhaps all of them, have been too reticent and conservative, 
holding On to the dead past and lost prestige with the masses. Dr. 

28 



Proctor is planning a progressive and constructive programme. I could 
not lose the opportunity which his kind invitation gave me to tell our 
N"orthern friends what our Southern brethren are doing along many 
lines. I also had the invitation to address a large Baptist Church in 
Brooklyn where more than a third of its membership of more than three 
hundred members were from Gloucester County in Virginia. A former 
Brick School boy was the shepherd of this flock. 

Out on Long Island we had the pleasure of addressing a small Con- 
gregational Church under the leadership of Rev. G. W. Hinton. "We 
found here a goodly number of our North Carolina friends, and they 
were glad to hear from their friends here in North Carolina. 

Later the Fisk University singers from Nashville, Tenn., met with the 
Greater New York Fisk Club at the Y. W. C. A. in a Harlem Cafeteria, 
and a fine programme was given. I was invited to speak at the Baptist 
Ministers' meeting in New York in one of the largest churches in the 
city. If the size of the church, the furnishings, etc., and the appearance 
of the men meant anything it certainly looked as if our friends in New 
York City were very prosperous. The young lady who directs all the 
work of the Y. W. C. A. on 137th Street is a Brick School girl who later 
graduated from Pratt, and we have every evidence that she is making 
good in that great city. 

At Springfield in Massachusetts we had the pleasure of speaking three 
times for Rev. William N. DeBerry. Dr. DeBerry is a product of Fisk 
University and Oberlin Theological School. He has the finest work of 
any of our men. His church organization is unique; he is progressive 
and constructive, at the same time scholarly and conservative. He is the 
most aristocratic Negro preacher we have today. His spirit is contagious, 
and he has the finest cooperation of his members from the oldest to the 
youngest. 

At Rochester we had the invitation to address a very fine gathering of 
friends who had met at a reception to the teacher of their Sunday-school 
class and to the minister of their church. 

At Buffalo we also gave an address at another Baptist Church. In 
all of these places we met scores of people from North Carolina. 

In Cleveland, Ohio, I had the invitation to speak several times at 
the Mount Zion Congregational Church. Rev. Harold Kingsley is the 
present pastor. Rev. Kingsley is a product of Talladega College, Ala. 
His wife was a former teacher here at Bricks. We had a most cordial 
reception at his church and at his home. 

It was in this church where I read my first essay nearly forty years 
ago. Its pastor at that time was Rev. Dr. S. N. Brown, who is now 
Dean of Theology at Howard University. The church has had a great 
history. The former pastor was Rev. George V. Clark, of Charlotte, 
N. C. Dr. Clark was a Liberty County (Georgia) boy and a product 
of Atlanta University. The church is now in the most congested Negro 
section of Cleveland and has before it a great destiny and future. The 
present minister is a young man of great enthusiasm and well prepared 
to meet its growth. The city of Cleveland has a congested Negro popu- 
lation: I saw a statement in the Cleveland papers from the head of the 
Cleveland "Community Chest" that of all racial groups in the city the 
colored people had more than done their part with the least expenditure 

of effort. 

29 



I visited several of the larger churches — Baptist and Methodist 
churches. All the Cleveland churches seem to be in the most progressive 
state. Their church buildings are among the very best in the country. 
Their membership and attendance are very large. 

In Detroit we attended Rev. Dr. Bradby's church, which is said to have 
a membership of four thousand people. I also spoke at one of the serv- 
ices. They had four services going at the same time. About a third of 
these people held up their hands indicating that they were from Xorth 
Carolina. The day was very cold, but their spirits were very warm. 
Dr. Bradby is a Canadian, but understands thoroughly the N^egro tem- 
perament, and gives them exactly what is best fitted to that temperament. 
He speaks Avith authority. 

At night I attended one of our churclies ministered to by Rev. Brooks. 
The church has some institutional feature and is doing excellent service 
for the community. Mrs. E. E. Scott, of Montgomery, Ala., is assistant 
in these civic service features. 

In Kalamazoo, Mich., we attended a revival meeting in the Methodist 
Church. The temperature outside did not disturb the emotional ele- 
ments the least when the several ministers put on the "arousements.''' 
I had to wonder whether I was in northern Michigan or in jSTorth Caro- 
lina. 

I spoke in a Baptist Church in Chicago where they are said to have a 
membership of ten thousand people. Several services were going on at 
the same time. I also addressed a congregational audience in Chicago 
presided over by Rev. Dr. C. "W. Burton. Dr. Burton is a product of 
Taladega College, and Yale Theological School. He is a fine type of 
minister and is doing great good. 

In Butte, Montana, I was told there are about five hundred colored 
people and three colored churches. These churches had no regular 
ministers at the time of my visit. The colored men work as porters and 
miners. They have mixed schools. They have several social clubs and 
secret orders, such as the Masons and Odd Fellows. 

In almost all of the cities I visited mixed schools are the rule, and 
many of them have a percentage of colored teachers. In Cleveland espe- 
cially I was told that the coloi-ed teachers are liked very much by their 
students and parents of the opposite races. In many places it would be 
most difficult to tell Avho are colored and who are white. Most of the 
teachers I met are very efficient and alive to their job. 

In Tacoma I spoke to the Sunday-school in the morning and in the 
evening I spoke at the evening services of the First Congregational 
Church, Rev. Dr. Edgar C. Wheeler, minister. Prof. Oliver H. Richard- 
son, of the University of Washington, followed me with an address on 
the ''Study of International Relations." The subject of my address 
might have been ''Inter-Racial Relations." At the close of this address 
I visited the colored Methodist Church, and also spoke there. The 
church Avas Avell filled, and the services Avere full of interest. The 
minister Avas a Avell trained man, and had the best order and system in 
the church. 

In Portland I attended a meeting of a select group of ladies and gen- 
tlemen of the Theosophical Society. I did not speak, but Avent primarily 
to hear an old friend speak on the subject of "Racial Unity." His 
lectures covered a number of cities on the coast, and his subjects, "The 

30 



Unity of Religions," "Seven Valleys," ''Inter-racial Amity," "Harmony 
Between Eeligion and Science," "The Mashrak; Ulkar or Universal 
Science," "What is a Bahai ?" "Four Stages in Man's Growth." All of 
these different lectures are summed up in the one though, "The Funda- 
mental Unity of Races and Religion." The object of the lectures are 
the promotion of universal brotherhood, international cooperation, uni- 
versal education, the abandonment of prejudices. . The lecturer was a 
colored man, a product of Fisk University, and of the law school of 
Howard University. He has traveled through Europe, Egypt, and Pales- 
tine. His thought and language is clear and convincing. Our friend 
Dr. Gregory proved himself a master with these subjects. 

The subjects above are very suggestive. There is nothing else to be said 
when the speaker has finished his address. What does it mean ? In New 
York, Buifalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, St. Paul, and all our large 
centers there are the finest temples and edifices built to the new cult, 
new thought, new religion. Many of our traditional churches in these 
large centers have a hard fight to get a hearing. I attended one of these 
new thought churches in St. Paul where the interest was at white heat 
with an attendance of more than seven hundred people. The tempera- 
ture outside was fourteen degrees below zero. This Avas at night. All 
these cults are based in one way or another on the Bible, but we seem to 
have adapted for our own spiritual edification and practice that which 
fits our own mind and temperament. We then argue that everybody 
else is dead wrong. Some of the finest minds I know are lined up with 
these new cults. Surely they must have some basis for their mental 
attitude. 

I was asked by the Secretary, Rev. Dr. George Hinman, of the Ameri- 
can Missionary Association ofiiee in San Francisco, to fill an appointment 
for him in Berkley, CaL, February 26th. This was at the North Congre- 
gational Church at Berkley. This church was right under the shadow 
of the University of California, and I counted it a great honor to be 
asked to speak there. The minister of the church was Rev. Mr. Ralph 
Baxter Larkin. He was sick the day of my visit, and I was introduced 
by Rev. Dr. Sargent. The printed programme announcing the service 
for the day with my address had this on the first page, "A Church of 
Reverent Worship, open mind, intellectual freedom, social conscience, 
spiritual aspiration and human- sympathy. It seeks to discover and 
interpret the meaning of life in the life of the eternal." This expression 
gave me great poise for what I had to say. I was at once at ease. 

It is fine to speak to people who have a sympathetic spirit especially 
when you have a feeling that you have an unpopular subject. My racial 
identity was not clear in the mind of the gentleman who introduced me. 
He said something like this : "Professor Steiner, of the University of 
California said somewhere that if he had to be born again he would 
like to be born a colored man, so that he might be able to study the 
colored problem from the inside. We have with us today a gentleman 
who understands the colored problem, and who did not have to be born 
colored either." These may not be the exact words, but it is the thought. 
The first thing that I had to do was to dispel the mind of my audience 
of the fact or statement ju^st made, that I did not have to be born a 
colored man, and that I wanted them to know that the traditions of our 
country and the laws in many, if not all the states, had said that any 

31 



man is colored who has one iota of ISTegro blood in his veins. "I am glad 
to have the honor to address you as a colored man." Those who know 
me best tell me that I do not have many stopping places. So I fore- 
Avarned my friends in the front of me that sometimes my address was 
three in one and sometimes one in three. Three in one Avhen I have only 
one hour in Avhieh to speak and one in three when I have three hours 
in Avhich to speak. Speaking to a Congregational Church, and a white 
church, too, one has to observe the traditions very closely. These tradi- 
tions limit us to about thirty minutes, and unless one is very interesting 
he had better stop in twenty-five minutes. So my address had to be 
three in thirty. 

The audience was scarcely dismissed when a large crowd gathered at 
the corner of the church to ask more about certain topics which I had 
only the time to touch. They were seeking to discover and to interpret 
the meaning of life. I was invited to go home with many friends, but I 
could not go with all, so a compromise was effected, and several families 
joined, and I was the guest for the afternoon of these families. One 
of these families had been missionaries in China. Others had worked 
among the Japanese. There we were exchanging our experiences each 
for the edification of the other. We were all happy that our lot had been 
cast in these divergent directions. 

I cannot continue this without becoming monotonous. I was most 
happily received in a great many other churches, colored as well as 
Avhite. My message was generally, ''The Amistad," ''The American Mis- 
sionary Association," "General O. O. Howard and Reconstruction," "The 
Schools of the American Missionary Association," "The Progress of the 
Colored People," "Inter-Racial Relations," etc. One can see a wide lati- 
tude in these subjects. 

At the theaters we saw several colored stars. In Buffalo Charles 
Gilpin in "Emperor Jones." Gilpin is an artist of the first magnitude, 
but I did not like his selection. I am not a critic of such matters, but it 
did seem to me that his piece Avas coarse. It was very popular. One 
could hardly find seating room in the large house where the play Avas 
given. 

In New York "Shuffle 'Long" Avas exciting great interest. There must 
have been twenty or more taking part in the play, and every character 
was an artist. I never say anything finer. These people played in New 
York in one house for nearly a year, and Avhile the entrance fees Avere 
high the house Avas packed every night. 

In Chicago Bert Williams Avas the Avhole attraction. I saw him at the 
Studebaker in "The Loop" just before his breakdoAvn. I Avas told that 
after his death the company broke up. They could not find another 
"Bert Williams." In his death the race has lost one the greatest stars 
in the theatrical Avorld, irrespective of color. It is an aAvful tragedy of 
our times that racial prejudice is blind to art Avhen the artist happens to 
be colored. It is no fault of the artist that he Avas born colored. The 
theatrical field has been rather restricted so far as our colored artists are 
concerned, but AvherecA'er they haA'e had the opportunity they have not 
been found Avanting. 

"Broadway Rastus and Sambo" are in a class by themselves. The 
play is clean and fine, e\'ery Avhit of it. It Avill cure the blues. The 

32 



singers are the best on the American stage. The vaudeville is equal to 
any I have seen in the best white theaters. 

Every place visited we met xerj prominent colored men and women 
who were formerly from North Carolina. We are compiling some 
interesting data on them which we hope to give to the public later. 

In Cleveland we met our old friend Lawyer J. P. Green. He has been 
a lawyer there for forty years. He has written a splendid book of his 
life. He has been Recorder of Deeds in Washington, and for several 
terms member of the Ohio Legislature. 

Mr. Charles Smith, whose parents were North Carolina people, has 
served on the Cleveland police force twenty-five years, and is now 
retired. His parents lived at Chapel Hill this state, and migrated to 
Oberlin where he, with several other brothers and sisters, were educated. 

Mrs. Mary Talbert, of Buffalo, is President of the Negro Women's 
League, which is a national organization of women. She was educated 
in Oberlin. Her parents migrated there before the Civil War from this 
state. It would take a chapter to tell what great things she has done 
for the colored women and what she is now doing. She is a traveler, 
lecturer and scholar. She has recently raised the money to have the Pred 
Douglass Home in Washington City as a Memorial to the greatest Negro 
who ever lived. It will be dedicated the 12th of August, 1922. Her 
husband, Mr. William Talbert, is a city official in the treasurer's office, 
of Buffalo, New York. 

Mrs. Clara Hardy, of St. Paul, Minnesota, a sister of Mrs. Talbert, 
is also a graduate of Oberlin College. She has held many places of honor 
in her adopted city. She is now Court Bailiff. She is a writer and 
speaker of no mean ability. Her home was a perfect model. 

In California it was my pleasure to stop with Dr. R. R. Robinson. 
He is a Halifax County man. He was a student here for a number of 
years working his way with his hands. He laid out our walks, planted 
many of our older trees and helped to "Start Bricks." He took an agri- 
cultural course at the A. and T. College in this state and went to Tus- 
kegee, where he taught several years. He married a North Carolina 
girl from Bethel, who was a trained nurse. Later he went to Nashville, 
Tennessee, and took a course in medicine. After graduating he prac- 
ticed medicine in Brunswick, Ga., through the flue, and was very suc- 
cessful. After the world war he went to Tusla, Oklahoma, and was there 
when the riot broke out. He saved his life by hiding in the woods three 
days, he and his wife. He lost all his office fixtures and medical instru- 
ments, and every remnant of personal apparel. He is now a very suc- 
cessful physician in Los Angeles, California. 

I have given only an outline of some impressions of my trip to Cali- 
fornia with the hope that it may inspire some reader to know, to go, and 
to acquire a larger vision of the world and of life. 



33 



FARM LIFE 

For many years the fanner has been the laughing stock of the coun- 
try. The conduct of his farm and his business methods have brought 
him more gibes and thrusts than are brought to any other professional 
class. The late Booker T. Washington described the characteristics of 
his class many years ago. The poor old mule or horse and often the ox, 
hitched to a single plow, scratching tbe earth with as much effectiveness 
as an old Plymouth Rock rooster would scratch for newly planted oats. 
The farmer follows behind this slow plodding plow in tatters and rags, 
illy fed, too often diseased with hook worm or some other infectious 
malady. 

His road sides and ditch banks for ten or twenty feet back are filled 
with weeds and shrubby growth to sap the vitality from the grooving 
ci'ops in their proximity. He has stagnant pools all over his patch in 
wet weather to further deplete the gro^i'h of his crops that may be left 
from the weeds by the roadside and ditch banks. 

His home, the home of the old farmer, is the last thing to which any 
attention need be given. He has followed his methods for "Fifty years 
or more." He has cotton right up to the door, potatoes, peanuts or corn 
filling the yard. No place is left for flowers or ornamentation of any 
sort. The old log house, just a place in which to sleep and in which to 
hide when it storms outside. It has only two rooms for a large family. 
The old man is in tatters, the wife is in tatters and the children are in 
tatters. I have seen many, the least of the little ones, as naked as they 
came into the world. 

The implements of such a farmer never saw shelter or protection from 
the weather from the time they were bought from the store until they had 
been disintegrated by rust and rot and had gone back into the original 
mother earth to rest forevermore. 

The farmer himself had a personality that was uninviting and dirty. 
He thought the good Lord had created him for just the sort of life he 
was eking out, and he eschewed all progress. Good roads and decent 
schools were things he never needed and he would not consent for such 
improvements if they cost him anything. The old mongrel hen was 
good enough because she could roost in the trees and lay at the same 
time. The pinewood rooters were all right because they could make 
their living by eating pine roots and other people's crops. A half dozen 
dogs were useful to feed. The old cow was still kept in the family be- 
cause of the ancestral history and not because of her utility. 

Slipshod methods in business have been the handicap of more farmers 
than all the evils attending them. We very often receive congratulatory 
letters from business men on our farmers' programme and at the same 
time these business men lament the fact that our farmers' business meth- 
ods are so poorly managed. 

Not long ago we received notice that two of the Avealthiest farmers, 
Negro farmers, in Georgia had died. They were reputed to be worth 
more than a hundred thousand dollars in cash besides the great land 
holdings and other property they owned. Later when their estates were 

34 



settled up their business was in such, a tangled condition, all interwoven 
with that of their neighbors', that there was nothing left for the Avife and 
children. I hope that we do not have in North Carolina such tangles 
as the above. Whatever else the farmer does he ought to keep his busi- 
ness straight. We have found out through our Federal Farm Loan Or- 
ganization that many farmers have bought and paid for farms and 
liave paid taxes on these farms for twenty years, but it would take a 
"Philadelphia Lawyer" to find out whether the legal owner was the 
farmer, the banker, or the land company, or the merchant. That is bad 
business. Any man who mortgages his farm after he has paid for it 
seriously jeopardizes his future as far as his farm is concerned. If 
you have debts that must be met you had better sell a portion of your 
farm outright and keep the other clean and clear. The mortgage busi- 
ness is a bad business for the average farmer to take into his parner- 
ship. The merchants, the business men, the state • government and 
national government, are all emphasizing every movement tending to 
the exit of this mortgage system. The farmer, first of all, should give 
it a hard kick. 

It is a matter of education first. These farmers' meetings give us an 
opportunity to inform ourselves. Our schools and our colleges are 
helping us to get informed. The local conferences have no other pur- 
pose than to help you to be informed on farm and business matters 
relative to your farm. Bulletins sent out by the State and National 
governments are among the greatest educational agencies. They are all 
practically free. The farmer ivho does not and will not take advantage 
of such agencies of information is certainly destined to be at the foot of 
the ladder; and there is where he belongs. The farmer who is given 
all the agencies and says he will not pull himself up ought to go down. 
The sooner he goes with that spirit the better, so that some other man 
can take his place and make good. I still see some of these old timers 
carrying water across the field a half mile away, still taking care of the 
family wash down by the river side, still holding on to the old ash pile. 
These relics have been heirlooms in the family and we are reluctant to 
let them go. It takes some spirit, some purpose and a great will to tear 
away from these old traditions. It must be done if we are going to 
advance. We must learn the lessons of experience. They have been sad 
lessons to many farmers. These farmers' conferences are bringing to 
you lessons of scientific farming. Let the traditions go to the wind and 
take hold of the new problems in your farming and farming business 
that will bring success, happiness and a life. 

Today as never before the farmer is coining into his own. Watch 
the agricultural papers and magazines. Visit our county and state fairs. 
See the interest and note the comparisons in our community fairs. Prog- 
ress is in the air. If there are those who do not believe it, they will 
believe it, and feel the impress of the upward move, or they must get 
out of the business. Any farmer, white or colored, who does not line up 
with the best farming methods of the community is bound to lose out on 
his farm. The lessons may be hard, but as a class of farmers you must 
get these lessons. 

The first lesson that must come to every farmer is that he must line 
up or unite with other farmers in the prosecution of his work. Every 
industry is organized except that of farming. The farmer produces his 

3.5 



crops, and, unorganized, sells them to any bidder avIio comes along and 
takes his price or nothing. Organization Avill help the farmer to get the 
best price for his products. Xo man Avorks very long by himself at any- 
thing. You cannot make it alone. Cooperation is the word. You get 
cooperation by organization. Every industry that is Avorth the name is 
organized. 

Organization helps you to buy as well as it helps you to sell. It will 
get you the lowest prices for w^hat you have to buy, and the highest 
prices for what you have to sell. Single handed you pay what is charged 
and sell it for what you can get, much or little. The government is fos- 
tering the Federal Farm Loan Orgpiization in order to put the farmer 
on his feet. Are you using that organization? The state is encourag- 
ing farm unions. They can be formed in every community where you 
can find ten men, ten real men. Are you using this organization? 
Some communities are using them very effectively. Our own Federal 
Farm Loan Organization, the Tri-County Federal Farm Loan Organi- 
zation, of Bricks, N. C, has put into Negro farms and farm improve- 
ments about seventy-five thousand dollars and has applications for 
nearly as much more. Do we have your application ? 

Let us illustrate what we want to impress relative to cooperation and 
organization. A few years ago two renters came to the Brick School 
farm. Each had one horse. The wives had a lot of small children 
and could not be expected to do very much on the farm. One day I saw 
a team of two horses plowing. The two men had united their horses 
and were plowing their ground with a double team. One was plowing 
and the other man was clearing up the ditch banks. They worked 
tandem all summer and seemed to get fine results. They were hai)py in 
their work and each was company for the other. 

A few years ago we needed here on the Brick School farm a peanut 
thresher. No one could get the thresher alone, so an organization was 
perfected and a peanut thresher was bought for two hundred dollars. 
This thresher did fine work for many years, and brought the stock- 
holders a nice little revenue as long as it was in service. I cannot see 
why a few men in every community cannot unite their efi"orts and get 
everything they need on their farms. 

Every time I go to Rocky Mount I see scores and scores of wagons 
on the road hauling tobacco to market. These wagons go in groups for 
company and mutual help. I have counted as many as twenty in one 
group, and I am sure the different groups represent a certain community. 
Tliese communities of small farmers ought to unite and buy jointly a 
truck. Some of these grouped teams travel, to my personal knowledge, 
thirty miles Avith their tobacco. This trip takes two days and one night 
to land the sale. The teams and the men alike are unfit for work for 
several days thereafter. Count the cost of man, wagon and animals. 
The automobile will do the same work in a few hours and be ready 
instantly for other Avork. If the farmer drives his wagon half of his time 
on the road is lost driving this way and that getting out of the road for 
trucks and automobiles. If you cannot put your products on the market 
as fast as your neighbor you cannot compete Avith him. That is all. 
If you cannot do it single handed unite your forces. That is the com- 
monest of common sense. 



Farmers cannot hire ditching done any more. Ditching with pick 
and shovel is a past art. You cannot pay the price, and you cannot 
find the ditcher. Ditching is now a profession. The last time we had 
our work done by hand the gentleman came in a large Buick, worked a 
few hours for a few days and the job was done. The element of drudgery 
is too great. We are living in an age of steam and gas and power. 
Why strain the muscles when you can turn the throttle with the weight 
of one finger and the work is done? You can buy a machine ditcher, 
drawn by horse power, for as little as forty dollars. If done with hired 
help it does not take but a few yards to cost forty dollars. Two mules 
and a machine ditcher will make more ditches in a day than ten men can 
make in a week. Here the drudgery is eliminated. Any boy can drive 
the team. Why not join your forces and buy a ditcher or buy it by 
yourself? A dozen peanut growers will pay more to thresh their pea- 
nuts in one year than a whole peanut outfit will cost. At the same time 
it is yours and you can thresh your peanuts when you please to do it. 
You will have the outfit for many years, depending upon the care you 
give it. We are paying now around ten dollars a cord for cutting wood. 
The best woodcutters cannot cut more than two cords of Avood in the 
woods a day. Do you know that you can buy a wood saw that will fell 
the tree and cut up the wood, and that one man can cut as much as fif- 
teen cords in one day? Muscular strength and drudgery are again 
eliminated. Why not a few of you unite your forces and buy a machine, 
and in a few days lay in all the wood you need for the Avinter and sum- 
mer use? Do you like to trudge along the old way because it is tradi- 
tional? I do not know of anything more annoying than to have to run 
to the woods or Avood pile morning, noon and night, to cut wood for the 
preparation of the meal. To me it Avould be enough to spoil the temper 
of a saint. 

Here is a fine proposition suggested to me by a former Brickite. I 
am not sure that it is original Avith him, but it is a fine proposition and 
I am passing it along : 

The average farmer who is working on his own farm or farming on 
his own account must grow not less than four or five hundred bushels of 
peanuts yearly or more. Some, to my knoAvledge, groAv eight hundred 
and a thousand bushels. It usually costs twenty-five cents a sack to 
thresh this amount. One sack holds about four bushels. It w411 cost 
twenty-five dollars to thresh one hundred sacks or four hundred bushels. 
Form a, company of sufiicient numbers and let them pay for their stock 
exactly what they would pay to an outsider for threshing their peanuts. 
If properly handled it would pay for itself in one year and after that 
it ought to clear a dividend. 

There is one outstanding difficulty in this as in nearly everything in 
which we engage in cooperative manner. That one man who Avill take 
the leadership. Where is he? He must be unselfish, honest and level- 
headed. 

I am speaking especially with reference to farmers who have limited 
means and not much help. Cooperation and organization ought to 
mean more than a little partnership. To organize and cooperate for 
community uplift and progress takes a lot of intelligence and honesty. 
I would not impugn your citizenship and standing in the community to 
say that you lacked either as farmers. It is a fact that most of us as 

37 



farmers are hard to understand some of the simplest business relations. 
When the business demands that we shall pay our bills by a bank cheek 
and require a receipt, and that all these operations should be booked, and 
when an auditor is called in to balance our accounts and cheek up our 
mistakes we are too quick to think that our honesty is questioned. There 
is no other Avay to do business when others are involved in that business. 
The honest man wants to he checked uy. It gives him a standing that 
nothing else will. Treasurers and secretaries of any organization, 
whether churches, Sunday Schools, secret orders, debating societies, or 
what not, have no business keeping other people's money in their per- 
sonal possession. The banks are the national depositories for all such 
organizations and other people's money ought to be kept there. 

It should not only be put in the bank, but it ought to be put there to 
the credit of the institution to which it belongs. This may not be good 
farming, but it is good business. I know of at least one man who went 
to the penitentiary for using other people's money for only a few days 
and could not replace it. Organizations and companies should demand 
cancelled checks and receipts for all expenses every so often in a joint 
meeting. If officers count this an infringement upon their personal 
integrity dismiss them and get officers who do not so regard it. It is 
the only way to do business. 

We do not organize more and do not succeed better because we lack 
faith in each other. This is perfectly natural. The Negroes have been 
schooled in credulousness for a great many years. The encumbrance 
of so long an inheritance cannot be so easily thrown off. Expect the 
best that is in your neighbor and your neighbor will prove up to your 
highest expectation. You not only make your neighbor better by your 
good thoughts of him, but you add to your own spiritual and mental 
growth incalculably. You grow yourself. 

Farmers must buy modern machinery for their farm. It is the best 
investment you can make. Corn planters, cotton planters, gang plows, 
and machinery of every sort that will save you worry and steps should 
be bought. You cannot afford to farm Avithout these implements. If 
you do you must be left behind in the occupation of farming. You can 
not make it. I think a farmer who can buy an automobile ought to be 
able to buy a tractor engine. With a tractor engine you can plow, 
harrow, and plant your ground while your neighbor is breaking his 
ground, and you have beaten him a hundred miles in the manner in 
which you have prepared the soil. At the close of the day you are 
not too tired to go with your family to the moving picture show or to 
some community entertainment where you may get an inspirational 
uplift for the newt day's Avork. Look at your neighbors. That is what 
they do and keep ahead of you. 

I think the farmer who is making good ought to buy a Ford car. I 
saw a big farmer the other day who lived out about eight miles from 
Rocky Mount. He was driving a horse and buggy. I asked him how 
much money he had cleared the year before on his farm and he said 
that he had cleared over and above all expenses about three thousand 
dollars. It took him a good half day to drive to Rocky Mount for his 
plow point. He might have saved the trip or run over there in twenty 
minutes and made his purchase and had the rest of the day for work 
on his farm if he had owned a Ford car. I am not arguing that one 

3S 



should purchase modern machinery with which to facilitate his work 
in order to give him more time to be idle. It will give him more time 
to do the things that machinery cannot do. The good farmer never 
has idle time. Time spent at a farmers' conference is not idle time. 
The matter of getting the latest and best information on farming meth- 
ods is the most important thing that a farmer can do. One cannot put 
into practice on his farm or anywhere else what he dges not know. 

Improved machinery means more intelligence on the farm. Farming 
is the most complicated and diversified occupation there is in the world. 
It takes a horticulturist to grow apples to perfection. It takes a dairy- 
man of the best type to put milk and butter on the market to meet state 
and county inspection and public approval. It takes a mechanic of the 
highest quality to keep up repair on the farm of fences, houses and ma- 
chinery. It takes a bookkeeper to keep farm accounts and records. He 
must be something of a Wall Street broker to keep up Avith market prices 
so that he will knoAv how and when to sell his farm products. He must 
be an electrician and an engineer as Avell if he is going to compete with 
his neighbor who lights his house with a Delco light and runs all of his 
machinery with power. 

When you come to live stock you have a world without end of neces- 
sary information for your success. Cattle, cows, sheep, hogs, horses, 
poultry, bees, and scores of special strains of each, every one of them re- 
quiring special treatment and expert knowledge. If the farmer has the 
inclination and the will he can become specialist in any one of these 
lines. There are men who do nothing but breed the special brands of 
high bred stock. There are those who breed bees and who supply the 
world's demands of purebred queen bees. The higher you go in this 
specialization the more you become the world's greatest benefactor. 

I have been studying about the value of limes upon the soils. To be 
a first-class farmer you must be a chemist of the first magnitude. You 
as farmers, have no idea of the part that chemicals must play in the pro- 
duction of your crops. The fertilizer that will bring to perfection one 
crop will kill another. You must know the fertilizer and know the 
nature of the soil on which this fertilizer is to be used and you must know 
how well a certain grade of fertilizer is adapted to the seed you want 
to produce. Every first-class farm is a chemical laboratory and the 
farmer is a chemist. Every first-class farmer must be something of a 
physicist as well. Every first-class farmer must be something of a doc- 
tor as well for all animals are subject to bodily disorders that must be 
corrected by medical advice. He must also be a weather prophet. You 
cut your hay and let the storm come on it and see Avhere your profits 
go. You must be able to read the signs in the heavens and the pub- 
lished directions. Your job is a big one requiring as you go up the 
most complicated knowledge about every thing under the sun. I have 
said nothing about plant diseases and insect life afi^ecting the success of 
the farmer nor that world or destruction hid in the unseen bacteria. As 
farmers you may be sluggards moving along on the lowest possible level 
of life or you may be a prince living in a palace. There are a lot of us 
on the lower levels who ought to move up to the higher gradations. You 
can get more out of your farm life but you must Ivnotv hoiu. 

If you expect to work simply as a hireling you Avill not need this 
information to any great extent. You only have to do as you are told 

39 



to do as a hireling. You may never as a hireling be asked to use even 
your own initiative in an emergency. If you expect to manage a farm 
you must have initiative and some executive ability. Twenty acres or 
more constitute a farm. If you have that much land you are a farmer 
and you must move on your own initiative. 

The days of ignorant farming are passing. The government cannot 
and does not encourage ignorant farming. The times are demanding 
better schools and better roads. These two improvements are here and 
the farmers must pay the bills. Your farm must make you a living and 
enough more to meet these public expenses. If your intelligence will 
not make the ends meet, then before a great while the taxes will eat you 
up and your land Avill go into the ownership of men Avho have the intelli- 
gence to make the land meet the bills for public improvements. As 
farmers you must subscribe to every public improvement that comes into 
your community. You must buy stocks, bonds and meet public taxes. 
These improvements all increase the value of your farm. Selfishness 
and personal ends must not hold back community progress in any line. 
You are a part of the community and when you hold back its progress 
you defeat yourself. I^ot to know is no longer an excuse. You must 
hnoxv. You cannot stay at home and pride yourself that you never go 
to a farmers' meeting and expect to know. ^Vherever people are gathered 
together to discuss public problems there you may go to learn. There is 
where you get in the spirit of things. There is where you get knowledge. 
There is where you get the inspiration. The spirit of rivalry and com- 
petition will go a long way to help us in our farm operations. There is a 
farmer in Nash County who thinks he can beat every one else in the 
county growing watermelons. There is a score of farmers in his com- 
munity quietly trying to beat him. The result is that there are better 
watermelons grown in that community than in any other community in 
the county. 



40 



RURAL LIFE 

(continued) 
Farmers' Congress, August 16, 17, 1921 

It is worth very much to any man who is interested in agricultural 
operations to take a leisurely trip four hundred miles through JYorth 
Carolina in an automobile. A party of us left Bricks July 11th and 
joined Rev. P. R. DeBerry in Raleigh. Taking his big Studebaker car, 
we were off the 12th for a two days trip among the colored farmers of 
the central and western part of the state. 

We were not touring, nor sightseeing, nor joy riding. Our one pur- 
pose was to study the land, the people and the conditions under which 
our colored farmers were living. We wanted to see what conditions were 
compatible and what were not compatible. The trip took us through 
about eighteen counties. 

We started our study in Edgecombe County. This is the county in 
which Brick School is located. This county should be the first in all of 
its operations because of its educational advantages and the inspiration 
it ought to receive from this institution. 

There are in the county now about 25,000 Negroes. These ISTegroes 
own 4,000 farms and homes, numbering about 17,000 acres of land. 
Some individuals own as much as 500 acres. We are sorry to say that 
most of this land is not under the most improved condition. We have 
not been able to have in this county a full time farm demonstration agent. 
The Brick School and our farm meetings have given very much impulse 
to farm operations, but even this has not reached all the farmers in ways 
to stimulate them to their greatest efforts. We lack time, money and 
authority that ought to come directly from the state. It has been demon- 
strated in other counties that nothing is so valuable in stimulating the 
farmers as a real, live, wide-a-wake farm demonstration agent who lives 
and works among the farmers every day. A farm not half developed and 
not improved is not an asset to the state nor to the owner. It ought to 
come into the highest state of production, then only does it become 
wealth. 

The school population of this county is about 7,000 children with an 
enrollment of about 5,000 children, whose average attendance is about 
3,000 under the compulsory law. The county has a colored school super- 
visor w^ho gives the work all of her time. Mrs. Carrie Battle has revo- 
lutionized the school work under her charge. She is insistent and tire- 
less. Every one knows her and respects her. Her office is in the court- 
house at Tarboro. The white county officials hold her in the highest 
esteem. The teachers and schoolhouses rank among the best in the state 
for colored people. 

I do not know anything that affects public improvements and progress 
more than good roads. The farmers are generally slow to vote for good 
roads, but no class of people appreciate them more than the farmer when 
they are built. The area of the county is 515 square miles, and yet I have 
traveled over every part of the county and over some of the best roads 

41 



in the state. The local papers tell us that a cement road leading across 
the connty is noAv in process of construction. This road will eventually 
lead into Raleigh, some fifty miles away. 

Halifax County has an area of 681 square miles, with a colored popu- 
lation of nearly 30,000 souls. They own 70,000 acres of land. Their 
school poulation is around 10,000, with an enrollment of ahout 7,000, 
and an average attendance of about 3,000 children. This county has a 
colored school supervisor who has done a very fine work among the 
colored people. The colored people meet every condition set by the state 
and county for the erection of colored schoolhouses. A few months ago 
they had raised their part for twelve Rosenwald schoolhouses, and had to 
wait on the county and state to recoupe their part. They will meet any 
condition set for them. The colored population is not congested in any 
one part of the county. They are located in every section of the county 
and about evenly distributed. Their homes, for the most part, are clean, 
and their houses are well constructed and shoAv signs of thrift and happi- 
ness. Very few colored farmers have migrated from this section of the 
state. Those who have gone from Halifax County can hardly be missed. 
This in itself shows that the racial equilibrium is not much disturbed. 

Xash County, which joins us on the west, is one of our best farming 
communities. The fifteen thousand Xegroes in the county own more 
than 25,000 acres of land and more than 2,000 farms. They are a pro- 
gressive lot of colored people. They have a number of independent 
schools aside from the public schools. They have excellent churches, and 
their homes are being built on modern lines. This county has twelve 
miles of cement road running from Rocky Mount to JTashville, the county 
seat. The contour of the county is rolling and red clay. The important 
tOAvns are Xashville, Spring Hope, Middlesex, and let us say a part of 
Rocky Mount. There is a great deal of the land in this county unculti- 
vated and developed. It waits only for the man who has the brain and 
the energy. The county has no county farm demonstration agent nor 
colored school supervisor. I do not know what can be more advantageous 
to the success of the colored farmer than the addition of a colored farm 
demonstration agent and a colored school supervisor. While the preach- 
ers arc ministering to the spiritual needs of our folks and the teachers 
are directing their intellectual life, and the state and county health offices 
are looking after the health of the masses, the farm demonstration 
agents and the colored school supervisors are daily giving inspiration 
and purpose to rural life every^vhere. The state and county are the direct 
beneficiaries of the work of these two agents. Having five children go to 
school every day from one family where formerly only three went means 
very much for the literacy of the state. 

Teaching boys how to grow forty bushels of corn on the same acreage 
where their fathers could grow only ten is adding very much to the 
wealth of the state. The community which does not appreciate and 
recognize this truth is impervious to eternal values. Every farmers' 
conference tells how much increase there has been in corn, peas, cotton, 
peanuts, oats, rye, tobacco, and other things under the direction of our 
farm demonstration agents. 

We pass through Franklin County into Wake. Every one knows that 
Raleigh is in Wake County. As soon as you arrive in Wakefield or 
Zebulon, both small country hamlets, you knoAV that you must be about 

42 



fifteen miles from the capital city. Hard-surfaced roads present sucli a 
temptation to touch the accelerator just a little, and little, and again a 
little more, and again, if you do not happen to see any motorcycles lurk- 
ing about. The colored population of this county is less than 30,000, 
and they own less than 6,000 farms. They own about 60,000 acres of 
land. Their school population is about 10,000, Avith an enrollment of 
about 7,000, and an aA'erage daily attendance of about 4,000 children. 
We ought to expect the school average to be higher, of course, being ad- 
jacent to the seat of state authority. "Wake County has had for a number 
of years two colored agents, in the person of Miss Delany for the schools, 
and Professor Roberts for the farmers. They have gone in and out of the 
farm homes daily carrying inspiration and encouragement and inspiring 
hope. The daily contact with these personalities has been the leavening 
power in the county. We have seen for a number of years the finest 
products that could be produced on exhibition in our colored State Fair. 
In the city market in Raleigh every day in the year one will see these 
same fine farm products. They will do justice to any racial group. 
Here one will see what the agents are doing to help the farmers to con- 
serve and preserve their products. The homes of the farmers show neat- 
ness and cleanliness. We have been greatly surprised to see how far 
some of our farmers have gone in beautifying their homes and premises. 
This is as it should he. 

The excellent public schools of Raleigh, the fine institutions repre- 
sented by St. Augustine School and Shaw University have given the 
colored rural population a great inspiration. The well ordered homes of 
some of their city cousins have also been an inspiration to the colored 
rural population. 

There are so many opportunities, educational and inspirational, about 
the state capitol, that it is almost like living under the shadows of a 
great university. Then the main thoroughfares ars so fine that those 
living in the most remote parts of the county ought to have no difficulty 
or count it no hardship to go to the city for lectures, recitals, conventions, 
conferences, and for general consultation with those under state au- 
thority. These opportunities are the best sort of unearned increment. 

We pass from Wake County to Chatham County. There are no less 
than 8,000 colored peoj)le in Chatham County. They own about 2,000 
farms and homes, and about 30,000 acres of land. The two small towns, 
Moncure and Haywood, have quite a settlement of colored people. At 
Haywood they seem rather isolated and some of the homes had a pro- 
gressive appearance. The disadvantages under which we started, the 
social, industrial, business and educational status, in which we find our- 
selves should not be alloAved to differentiate from other people who live 
in the same community and in the same environment. 

If other racial groups living in the same community have their homes 
painted, flowers in their gardens and other ornaments that add to home 
life and beauty, it is perfectly right that Ave should catch the inspiration. 
If Ave cannot be leaders in these matters, we ought to be good followers. 
We have the labor, and a gallon of paint and a paint brush Avill work 
^vonders in a few hours. If Ave cannot keep the yard fence looking decent 
and in repair let us move it. We must take personal pride in the com- 
munity in Avhich Ave live. It is the best sort of civic pride. In this 

43 



community we ought to prove our best selves. Chatliam County has dis- 
graced itself recently with a lynching bee. 

Crossing the river into Lee County we Avere very much impressed with, 
the sign, "You are welcome to Lee County." This large sign was in a 
most conspicuous place and we interpreted it to mean what it said, and 
that Ave were included in the invitation. We stopped to ponder and to 
contrast the difference. We have been in parts of our country where the 
overhead signs read, "Nigers and dogs not wanted." We have seen in 
other parts where land Avas advertised for sale and the biggest asset in 
the advertisement Avas the absence of ISTegroes from the community. 

There are less than 4,000 colored people in Lee County. They own 
about 700 farms and about 8,000 acres of land. The area of the county 
is very small, and the entire population less than 15,000. 

I have been for several years on a local inter-racial committee. Since- 
the Avorld Avar it has been necessary to haA-e such a committee in the 
South on inter-racial relations. I am also on the state inter-racial com- 
mittee. That means that I am always looking out for the small things 
and the larger things, too, as we make our daily rounds, that count for 
good will and peace between the two racial groups. At Sanford we saw 
a large number of colored men at work as carpenters and bricklayers on 
some of the finest buildings going up in the city. I Avas shown others 
and adAased that they were the work of colored carpenters, under colored 
contractors. A former Brick School boy was foreman on one of the 
jobs. These contractors and AA'orkmen were personal friends of mine, 
and later I had the pleasure of seeing some of their oavu homes and 
business. They were among the best in the community. BroadAvay, 
Cumnock, and Jonesboro are progressive communities in which the 
colored people are doing well. I Avas advised that only a feAv of the 
colored people had migrated from this part of the state. It means that 
they are happy and that they can buy homes in communities that are 
compatible. After all, we must have compatibility in our homes and in 
our neighborhood, in our community, in our relations with the outside 
AA^orld. I Avould not Vive a week in a community that was not compatible. 
To receive a gibe and a thrust every time one steps on the street, or into 
a corner grocery, or on the public highway, by other racial groups is 
contemptible, and especially so Avhen one knows that there is absolutely 
no redress for that sort of contempt. One Avonders what the preachers 
are preaching or Avhat the schools are teaching. Patriotism, love of com- 
munity, social and personal progress are of sIoav groAvth in such communi- 
ties where there is so much incompatibility. 

All the world has heard of Moore County. It is an area of 798 square 
miles. The main line of the Seaboard railroad crosses it from north to 
south. It is crossed and recrossed by Page's railroad. Here is Southern 
Pines, Pinehurst, Jackson Springs, Carthage, and scores of other smaller 
toAAais. The names are common to the resorter and tourist. It has a 
population of less than 6,000 Negroes, Avho oaa'u about 16,000 acres of 
land. Excluding the villages and toAvns, tAventy-five years ago I would 
not have paid the taxes for all the rest of the land. TAventy-five years 
ago I Avent all over the county, and one could scarcely get anywhere for 
the sand and roads were practically unknown. Sand, sand, sand — every- 
where sand. 

44 



Moore County is now the veritable garden spot of the state. The local 
intersecting railroads have changed hands. Fine public highways have 
been built in every direction. The tourist and capitalist, making their 
annual visits to this section, have discovered in that vast land undis- 
covered possibilities of wealth. Thousands and thousands of acres of 
this waste have been converted into peach orchards. Peach packing sta- 
tions have been built all along the track for the convenience of the peach 
shippers. I was told that several trains of peaches were shipped daily 
to the l^orthern market. Where the land was not already planted I saw 
the Fordson tractors getting it ready for fall planting. Most of this 
undeveloped land was what is called cut-over land. It is absolutely 
barren except for a lot of shrubby pines shrubby oaks and some native 
tough grasses and wild composite flowers. Tupelle and poplar may be 
found in the swamps and lowlands. 

I wondered as I passed along to get a bit of information here and 
there, if our colored people were learning to do by doing. I wondered 
if they were getting the inspiration. Sixteen thousand acres of land 
ought to be the nucleus of an industry. A hundred acres ought to make 
a good peach farm. What an opportunity for the colored man who has 
brain and industry and some little money and a great ambition. We have 
not the faintest idea of the wonderful opportunities in the millions of 
acres of the waste lands of our southern country. These lands are just 
begging the capitalist to come and invest in the undeveloped resources 
of its bosom. It is there, but it just needs the brain and some little 
money. The brawn is there, too; it just needs the intelligent direction. 
Compatible conditions will keep it there. 

The land in Moore County will never again sell for one dollar an 
acre while peaches are selling for three dollars a bushel at the tree. Most 
of the trees bear from two to five bushels of peaches. They are planted 
about fifteen feet apart. It takes about 150 trees to the acre. Any one 
can figure the income at that rate. These peaches ought to begin bearing 
in three years. There is nothing so fabulous as the income per acre from 
such an investment. There is nothing so sure. Some of the rows as we 
viewed them seemed endless. Greensboro, sixty miles away, was sending 
trucks to the peach area daily for loads of peaches for the local market, 
in Greensboro. A little while back one of these peach orchards sold for 
$85,000. 

The business of supervision has become so 'important that many of 
the growers combine and employ an expert from the State Department of 
Agriculture. They can pay more than the state can pay 'for such expert 
supervision. The work is as yet in its infancy. We are advising our 
'Negro boys to go to our best agricultural schools and specialize in this 
department of fruit cultivation so that they can manage such enterprises 
as these large fruit farms. They do not seem to get the vision. As long 
as our folks are buying farms, and they are increasing their holdings 
every year, there are vast opj)ortunities for their services as horticul- 
turists. Ten ISTegro farmers in Moore County, North Carolina, ought to 
be able to get together and make peach-growing worth while to the 
group. Their traditions and the local environment have taken away 
their inspiration. They also lack knowledge. They have not been 
schooled in initiative of this sort. Cooperation with most of us has been 
a doubtful experiment. We must learn and grow more before we can 

45 



take hold of tlie larger industries that require large cooperation. Expe- 
rience and knowledge are vital to the success of an^^ enterprise. The 
great enterprises of the North have been growing cooperatively since the 
country Avas discovered. The South has been giving its time to matters 
of social adjustments. The adjustment of its racial groups has been its 
nightmare by day as well as by night. Hatreds, jealousies, prejudices, 
have entered too much into our daily contact and relations to allow us to 
grow nationally. The conditions of all progress are in education, indus- 
try, compatibility. 

I read somewhere that the conscious mind may not get a true per- 
spective and may error. Still it is conscious. When I read in the papers 
every day and note all the deviltries perj^etrated here and there all over 
the South, I wonder that we have all gotten along as well as we have, 
and especially do I wonder how the ISTcgro has made such progress. Then 
I hear that the subconscious mind never errors. The conscious mind 
would have me riled and leaving the country, boot and baggage, when I 
read what is happening somewhere else outside of ISTorth Carolina. The 
subconscious mind comes in and says to me, when I am quiet and alone 
and perhaps when I am half asleep, "Xo, do not get discouraged." The 
South is the garden spot of the world. It has the prettiest moons, the 
brightest days, its florescence on a thousand hills and in as many vales 
scatters its fragrance and beauty three hundred and sixty-five days in 
the year. Its cataracts, rills, and springs sparkle with diamonds of 
beauty and health. The woods and swamps are filled with every sort of 
game, her rivers and lakes abound with every known fish for the sports- 
men, her climate is the most equitable in the world, the rainfall the most 
evenly distributed, the storms not so awfully destructive, the exotic popu- 
lation the least of that of any other similar area, with an adapted vegeta- 
tion from the highest altitudes to the equator. The contour of the 
surface is high or low as one likes it. Smooth or rough. The Blue Ridge 
Mountains afford a retreat from the Northern winters as well as a 
retreat from the Southern sun. Her altitude, pine forest and splendid 
waters are an asset that no other country in the world can equal. In the 
next few years more than fifty millions of dollars will be spent in North 
Carolina alone for public roads. Steam roads and electric cars will soon 
intersect every nook and corner of the state. The most inaccessible parts 
of the state and the South will become the public highways. Automobiles 
and trucks will bring the most remote farms to the city«markets daily. 
The telephone and radio are already available in our country homes. 

In the next 4;wo years North Carolina will spend four millions of 
dollars for Negro health and education. This has already been passed 
by state Legislature. This amount of money put into health and educa- 
tion in any community will make a change. It shows an enlightenment 
of public sentiment and a change of attitude on the part of the citizens 
of the state. Progress cannot and will not be thwarted. Education, en- 
lightenment, Christianity — this trio is the saving grace of any com- 
munity. I do not know of any place better than North Carolina. This 
is my snhconscious mind. It never errors. 

We leave Moore County and cross into Montgomery County. This is 
what we call a hickory country. The land is rocky and red with hills 
almost precipitous. We could not visit many of the colored people 
because of the inaccessibility of most of the rural homes. The colored 

46 



population is about 4,000, and they pay taxes on about 8,000 acres of 
land. They are engaged in general agriculture, corn, tobacco and cotton 
being their prevailing crops. They have a few cotton factories in the 
town of Troy and more in the county, and many lumber mills. The 
Pedee River and its tributaries furnish a large part of the power for 
the factory work. The covmty has a real gold mine which was profitably 
worked a few years ago. It was my pleasure to visit it some years ago 
when it was in operation. It has been abandoned, and the machinery 
and buildings shoAV signs of a past prosperity. 

The town of Troy has one of the two wooden courthouses left in the 
state. It was being replaced by a modern stone structure. It will cost 
when finished about $200,000. I am told that the stone in the construc- 
tion of this building was taken from the site on which the building stands. 
It rather reminds one of our ]^J'orthern centers in that it stands at the 
juncture of a number of the public roads leading into the toAvn. 

The Peabody School, under the auspices of the American Missionary 
Association of I^ew York, is the only institution in all of that part of 
the country giving anything like a high school education to the colored 
people in all of that section of the country. The school is beautiful for 
its location just out of the city. It fronts a public road and is on high 
ground with splendid drainage. Several of their buildings are new and 
up-to-date for school purposes. 

A hard-surfaced road is in construction from Charlotte to Raleigh. 
The distance is nearly two hundred miles. It will probably pass through 
nine counties. It will open up a country of immense possibilities. A 
cement bridge connecting up this road is already in construction across 
the Yadkin River. This bridge will be nearly or quite 2,000 feet long. 
It would ornament the approach to any iN^orthern city. 

From Troy we went to Biscoe, Star and Ashboro in Randolph County. 
This is also an oak and hickory county. The roads took us through a 
very fine section of the country. The country looks very undeveloped. 
The roads were very fine. The rural homes appeared rather small. Many 
of the women along the roads were seen bottoming chairs. Chair-making 
seemed to be one of the main industries in that section. The frames of 
the chairs were made at the factories and sent out to the country women 
to have the bottoms put in them. These bottoms were made of white 
oak splits. The absence of colored people engaged in this business seemed 
very noticeable. 

. The town of Ashboro had all the appearances of being a hustling town. 
More than a half dozen buildings were going up. We saw no colored 
carpenters or bricklayers on the job anywhere. We were advised that 
no colored men were allowed to work at their trade in the town. We saw 
several colored mechanics with their kit of tools packed, leaving the town. 
Some of them we knew to be the equal of any mechanics in any other 
group of workers. Still their mechanical efficiency counted nothing. It 
was their unfortunate tradition, and their black faces which counted 
them out. Here my conscious mind came up again. We did not have 
the feeling that we had when we left Lee County. A man ought to be 
passed on his merits and not on his color. They wanted mechanics, but 
not black mechanics. These men would do well to migrate. Wherever 
they went I know they were in the frame of mind to swear vengeance 

47 



against any community that would tolerate that sort of condition. That 
is what makes socialists, bolsheviks, and Catholics out of us. 

We soon find ourselves in Guilford County. We arrive in High Point 
and remain long enough' to sec friends and inquire about the conditions 
of our farmers. 

I think it true that there are more manfacturers of furniture in this 
county than in any other county in the state. The Brick School has 
bought furniture in New York only to await shipment from High Point. 
Later we have gone to High Point and seen this furniture in the making. 
These two cities are in the oak and hickory section of the state. I have 
seen its street cars in Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Washington, 
Asheville, xVtlanta, Ga., Birmingham, Ala. Of course a business of this 
size will give work of one sort or another to a great many of our colored 
laborers. There are 15,000 of our people in Guilford County. They 
own 3,000 homes and farms. They are paying taxes on 17,000 acres of 
•land. The Negroes in Guilford County have the inspiration of one of 
the best state colleges for Negroes to be found in the South. The college 
ought to be the certer of all the best influence for farming in a hundred 
miles about it. If they are found to be using poor farming methods they 
ought to be fined. Alamance, Orange and Durham counties are rather 
small counties, but they have some of the best farms and form some of 
the best farming and industrial communities to be found in the state. 
Durham is really the emporium for Negro enterprise and thrift. To- 
bacco, cotton and corn, and some wheat are the leading farm products 
in this section of the state. Gibsonville, Burlington, Graham and Hills- 
horo are thriving towns. They are centers of cotton and furniture manu- 
facturing interests. 

This study took us through about fifteen counties. We were not 
investigating the town and city conditions, but the farming interests. 
In counties where they had rural supervisors there was a marked dif- 
ference in the attitude and progress of the farmers. Their outward 
appearance was different from what we saw several years ago. The 
farmers were better clad ; their work animals were in better condition ; 
their teams were not all dilapidated; many of them are using improved 
machinery; their barns and houses were more orderly built and better 
maintained; the houses in which they live are a decided improvement 
over the old houses we usually see along the railroad. They are giving 
more care to their wells and pumps. They are learning to screen their 
windows. The ancestral waste barrel in many cases are being removed 
from their kitchen windows. They are using more paint not only io 
save their hoiises, but because it adds beauty to their premises. They 
are planting flowers. They are putting out fruit trees and investing in 
thoroughbred chickens, hogs and cows. These are all good signs. They 
are really coming. Some have had to come from so far down the road 
that it may appear that they have not made any progress. They are 
coming nevertheless. At no place where we stopped did we have to 
confine our diet to sweet potatoes and boiled eggs in order to preserve 
our health by the osmos process. 

We saw in many places attempts made to improve the soil. We found 
alfalfa, red clover and crimson clover in the red clay sections. Peas 
were grown generally. The farm demonstration agents and the farmers' 
conferences have been an inspiration to the farmers to grow legumes to 

48 



Lelp the land to bring forth its fruit. They are learning that they can- 
not use up the fertility of the soil and still have it. They are learning 
that an investment in legumes is one of the best they can make for crop 
productions. 

The papers have been saying that one man in four in the American 
army is uneducated. If that is true it is a sad comment on the condi- 
tions of this country. There is no power in the world to equal that of 
education. We cannot exaggerate its power and its importance. A 
trained mind, a trained hand and a trained heart are indomitable. An 
unlettered man lives in isolation. He cannot appreciate the creation of 
nature. There is no progress in isolation and a static mind atrophies. 
Whatever be the proportion of illiteracy, those of us who move about 
among the masses know that notwithstanding our private schools and 
public schools, ignorance and superstition are simply appalling. It is 
not only appalling, but it is dangerous to any environment. It is a 
menace to the state and government. 



49 



BRICK SCHOOL IN PERSPECTIVE 

Work began at the Brick School in 1895 i;nder the auspices of the 
American Missionary Association. The "Estes Farm," named after the 
owner, General Estes of the Civil War, came into the possession of Mrs. 
Jnlia E. Brewster Brick, of Brooklyn, 'New York, who found it a burden 
on her hands. Mrs. Brick had visited the community, and her heart 
had been made sad by the sights which greeted her on every side. The 
sad faces and depressed spirits in a large environment of Negro conges- 
tion appealed to her heart. She was responsive to this appeal. It was 
the voice of God which she did not mistake. 

Her life and thoughts and heart had been attuned to this appeal, and 
so she sought how best she might help the situation. The advice of 
General Oliver O. Howard was sought. He introduced Secretary A. F. 
Beard and Mr. H. W. Hubbard, at the time Treasurer of the American 
Missionary xissociation. The result of this counsel was that a large 
farm of 1,1291/2 acres of land in North Carolina three miles from the 
town of Enfield Avas given to the American Missionary Association for 
Negro education. With the gift came also from the same source $5,000 
for the first building. 

There folloAved other gifts from Mrs. Brick and from the American 
Missionary Association, so that the farm was soon stocked Avith hogs, 
horses, mules, cows and farm implements. Houses of various sorts, 
including school buildings, domitories, teachers' cottages, tenant houses 
and barns have been put up, valued at several hundred thousand dollars. 
This beautiful munificence has been our saving grace during the last 
twenty-seven years of stress and strain in the financial world. 

We began work with the modest number of five teachers. We now 
have about twenty teachers and a few less than 400 students. The stu- 
dents come from a dozen states and from nearly all the counties in North 
Carolina. The larger number of them comes from a radius of fifty 
miles. 

The purpose of the institution is to teach the students to do the things 
the best way in the community where they may live. Being rurally 
situated, the first and greatest appeal must bejnade along the line of an 
agricultural education. The knowledge of how to extract from the soil 
the largest and best products which the community may need for its 
consumption is an asset in which any group of people may well take 
pride. Most town and city boys coming to us have an aA'ersion to this 
form of education, and especially to the strenuousness necessary to an 
efficient application of the most vital principles of agriculture. 

Horses have to be shod, and farmers have to ha^^e houses in which to 
live and under which to shelter their stock. So we have to teach the boys 
to work in iron and wood. Along Avith this goes some draAving and 
planning. Tools and Avagons must be kept in repair. Boys going back 
to their communities ought to be later the real leaders in the community. 
In many instances they are the leaders. 

While the boys are investing their time in the farm crafts and the shop 
crafts the girls are learning to do needlcAvork and house cleaning, Avash- 

50 



ing and sewing. They learn the home life by getting some of the con- 
ventionalities of it here in the classroom under teachers who get from 
Pratt and Columbia and other good schools the best they hare to offer. 
These teachers are themselves largely the products of our American Mis- 
sionary Association Schools. They have not been satisfied to "graduate 
and quit," but they have continued to study. In addition to giving the 
boys work on the farm and in the shop, and the girls work in the kitchen, 
laundry, dining-room and sewing-room, and general house cleaning, all 
are offered a first-class high school course covering six years, preceded by 
six years of elementary education. 

The wa'iter of these notes is himself a product of Oberlin and Fisk 
University. He knows how to do a great many things, including type- 
setting, printing, farming, plumbing, some work in wood, poultry-raising 
and agriculture, stock husbandry. He lectures, preaches sometimes, and 
writes for newspapers. He counts himself a fair judge of artistic 
values wherever they are on exhibition. He knows how utterly impos- 
sible it is to try to do any one of the above things with any degree of 
efficiency or even ordinary skill without mental training. The mind is 
the master, and unless that has training and poise the hand fails. The 
academic Course is to meet this condition. Many of the boys and girls 
stay to finish it, but the bulk never finish. Many of them do not stay 
for the full course — not that they do not have the money in many 
cases — but because education among the masses it not popular. They 
have had a propaganda for many years that a little learning is a dan- 
gerous thing. They have been advised that they belong to a subject 
group, and that they need only the rudimentary necessaries of life. A 
fine horse and buggy or a car and nice clothes make an appeal above any 
sacrifice for study. It is the appeal for the glitter and the glare. This 
false notion comes to the half grown youth because they got a bad start. 
They were neglected in the public schools — parents ignorant of the 
necessity of education on the one hand, and poorly prepared teachers on 
the other hand, and poorly furnished and constructed schoolhouses. The 
whole school environment has not been psychological. It has rather 
been repulsive. 

Some who return to their homes are making good farmers, as evi- 
denced by their better crops, better fertility of their soil, better kept work 
animals, better kept machinery, better homes, yards, and community life. 

Many of those who finish the high school course attend other schools 
and later enter the ministry, dentistry, or become physicians, teachers, 
Y. M. C. A. or Y. W. C. A. workers, or instructors in agriculture either 
in our schools or as county farm demonstration agents. The best ex- 
amples are Isaac Bunn, farmer, and owns his OAvn farm of 250 acres 
bought and paid for in Halifax County; Benjamin Bullock, under the 
Smith-Lever Fund, in charge of agriculture in the colored state college 
in Texas ; Rev. A. S. Croom, Baptist minister, Salisbury, IST. C. ; Dr. 
Joseph Harrison, physician, Kinston, W. C. ; Dr. Willie Sessoms, dentist. 
Rocky Mount, 'N. C. ; Dr. R. R. Robinson, physician, Los Angeles, Cal. ; 
Miss Hattie Green, Miss Lucy Richmond McCoy, Miss Susie xidams. 
Young Women's Christian Association work, New York; Miss Annie 
Rhodes, teacher in the city schools of Chicago ; Miss Lula Bullock, 
teacher in city schools, Louisville, Ky. ; George Bullock, manual training 
in city schools of Louisville, Ky. ; Joseph Bullock, a captain in the 

51 



army, and now a student of dentistry. More than a hundred have gone 
out as graduates, and all are a leaA'ening in the community in which they 
live. The influence of the Brick School has counted in the community 
life of the masses more than any other agency in operation. We mean 
by "Community" the area of a circle of which the school is the center and 
whose radius is twenty-five miles. We have three counties virtually 
inside of this circle Avhose Xegro population is more than 60,000. The 
circle cuts into six other counties whose combined population is more 
than 148,000 Xegroes. The nearest institution under private auspices 
doing anything like high school Avork is exactly sixty-three miles away. 
We have a field all our own. The area in this circle is "our community." 

We have sought all these years to better the community life by reach- 
ing the farmers directly. To this end we have annually and semi-annu- 
ally farmers' meetings. They come and spend oiie or two days at our 
expense for entertainment, where they have contact with our teachers 
and with men and women sent by the State Department of Agricultxire 
at Raleigh, who lecture on the best methods of farm and home life. 

We must do more than talk. We must help them. We have here a 
local Federal Farm Loan Organization, and this organization in the 
last three years has put into Xegro farms more than $130,000. This 
money is let by the United States government and on conditions that can 
be met without hardship to the borroAver. Titles are investigated, deeds 
are properly made, and a new spirit is put into*the farmers of the com- 
munity. We are encouraging our colored men to buy small farms of 
twenty-five and fifty acres and build for themselves modest homes near 
their public schools as far as they can, and not too far from their local 
churches. We advise them to patronize these institutions freely and to 
build up their community life. 

The vision has been a long Avays oft", like the rainboAv, but they haA^e . 
begun to catch it. In these three counties they are paying taxes on more 
than 100,000 acres of land. Their homes are A'ery much improA^ed. 
Their churches are excellent for rural communities. They are con- 
tributing largely for the EosenAvald schools. In Halifax County they 
have tAvelve, and more are noAv in construction, the colored people paying 
one-third of the cost. 

They have helped us generously to erect several teachers' cottages here 
at Bricks, and $.5,000 is noAv pledged for further improvements, Avhich 
will be paid as soon as farming conditions and prices enable them to 
do so. 

Righteous public sentiment is of sIoav groAvth, and one cannot expect 
to change traditions quickly AA'hose roots liaA'e penetrated every strata 
of society. It takes sympathy, patience, years, Avork, and some money. 

T. S. IXBORDEN. 

May 17, 18, 1922. 



52 



103 W 



The JOSEPH K. BRICK 
> . SCHOOL 



/ "^^ ' ^ BRICKS, N.C. 



was organized twenty-seven years ago under the general 
supervision of the American Missionary Association. It 
offers a first-class High School Course, including Domes- 
tic Science, Domestic Art, Agriculture, Work in Iron and 
Steel, Mechanical Drawing, Instrumental and Vocal 
Music. 

Board, lodging, light, heat, and laundering cost per 
calendar month, $14.00. Tuition $2.00 and $2.50. Poor 
hoys over sixteen years of age may work out a part or all 
of this amount. 

The School Farm contains l,129i/> acres. 

There are 23 school buildings and cottages. 

The postoffice handles four mails each day, giving 
money order, registered mail, parcel post service. 

The telegraph and telephone connections are through 
Enfield, N. C. 

Atlantic Coast Line Trains 33 and 34 stop at Bricks on 
signal. 

Prepaid freight may be sent direct to Bricks, N. C. 
Express may be sent to Enfield, N. C. 

The enrollment for last year was 385 students, under 
the leadership of 22 teachers and officers. 

The students maintain religious, musical, and athletic 
organizations. 

There is a student brass band to enliven outdoor sports. 
For Catalogue and other information, write 

T. S. INBORDEN, Principal 



MITCHELL PRINTING CO.. RALEIGH 



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